Propagation
by serpentnine
Summary: This is the First Memory.    Devoid of timestamps or identifiers, it is older than counting; it was born nameless, when glyphs were simple, single things.            The first memory begins with light.      **Soundwave/Ravage, complete**
1. Chapter 1

Cowrite with HopeofDawn, set in the very distant past of her excellent Giants of the Earth saga, available on archiveofourown(dot)com

Warnings for... alien biology, alien cultural practices, tentacles, symbiotic relationship, possible sensuality?

.

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The cantonment was in an uproar.

Reports of deaths and devastation were not uncommon, of course. The empire had been at war for vorn. Everyone knew that entire colonies, some as small and distant as this one, had been wiped out. But all of them had been on the other side of the empire, many hundreds of lightvorn distant - or else they'd been trade centers, located adjacent to the biggest spacebridges, easily accessible to both merchants and raiders alike. This outpost, located on the very rim of the empire and far from any action, was surely safe from Tr!klcctch incursion. So everyone had thought.

Everyone had been wrong.

Scraphaulers were the first to be struck, those ramshackle ships so worn they no longer held an atmosphere, forcing all who rode in them to communicate exclusively by comm and recharge in zero-gee. These losses, while worrying, aroused no particular concern. Scraphaulers went adrift in the void all the time, and it was no great loss. But then had come the attack on the Atropos.

A small cruiser, the ship was one of many which transported carriers. Such small, fast ships were common in this sector. Xyr was the home of three creator-mechs who specialized in chronicler frames - both carrier and symbiont - and the rocky little planet had become something of a training center for their kind, a place of meeting and learning. And sometimes, repairing. Any repairbot could do good patchwork on a carrier of course, but sometimes, for some things... nothing but an artist's touch would do.

Which made the destruction of the Atropos all the more distressing. One ship meant nothing, though the loss of the several carriers aboard was saddening. But they'd all been accompanied by full cohorts. And the sacrifice of symbionts was a tragedy.

Ships were launched, rescue vessels and armed escorts. They'd scoured the site of the attack for three orn. Only seven symbionts - drifting alone and injured between the stars - were ever found.

Of those, the sparks of two had already guttered out.

Five survivors-who had lost not only their carriers, but in most cases, all their sibling symbionts as well. Only the imperative to *survive*, to preserve the data they carried, had kept these few still alive, and their grief seemed to permeate the entire colony, spreading like a contagion between carriers and cohorts.

The creator-mecha who lived on Xyr also shared in that grief; some of the lost had been their own creations. But their function was not to mourn the dead, but to create life, and they threw themselves into that with a single-minded dedication, working alongside medics as their specialized knowledge was needed, welcoming the orphaned symbionts into their own residences until they healed. Eventually the survivors would need to choose new host mecha, and join new cohorts; but in the meantime they could rest, and grieve as they wished.

Recast was one of those three. Well-regarded as an innovator, if not quite artisan-ranked, his creations were often uniquely-talented and highly sought after. Currently, his residence held only three works in progress; two sparklings - one carrier and one symbiont - plus a single subadult, a carrier, waiting for his last frame-upgrades before leaving his creator's care to form a cohort and chart his own way between the stars. With so much empty space, it was only logical to offer a injured bladeframe sanctuary-an offer that, after a brief period of consideration, was accepted.

Like the bladeframe, Recast's compound was all mathematical perfection, clean lines and elegant symmetries.

The interlinked structures were nestled into a great rocky hollow where, in the dense atmosphere and three-quarter standard cybertronian gravity, solvents welled from the porous stone below. They carried with them dissolved minerals, which sought out their cousins and coalesced, atoms stacking to slowly grow a myriad of shapes. Planed quartzes clustered thick, alongside great clumps of needled natrolite, square prisms of zircon, pyrite suns, globular hematites, striated shafts of tourmaline that rose as high as a mech's waist. Crystals coated every surface, save the approach road.

Elevated a few mechanometers above the ground and the dense semi-gaseous bath of solvents that clung there, the four buildings of Recast's compound had been hewn from native volcanic stone, threaded through with crystals of feldspar and topaz. The structures stood around a central square, densely fogged with solvent mists, delicate metal walkways spanning a pool below. From the center of the solvent pool grew a branching shaft of titanium dioxide, redder than the purest energon, taller than a Prime and so thick a mech could not have wrapped his arms around the central trunk. Smaller deposits of minerals had crusted it, over many, many vorn - plumose or lenticular growths in purples and blues, clear folated wafers of mica that caught and reflected the light of Xyr's twin dim suns. The crystal had been developing since before this little planet was colonized. It still grew, however slowly - sieving minerals from the mist, an atom at a time.

The four buildings were large, bowed on their outer walls. Two were living quarters of varying kinds, cast in the same simple, spare lines as the exterior. Workshops and studios occupied the other two.

It was a great deal of space for five mecha. There was plenty of room for a bladeframe to rest, and recover... and to keep his mending body out from under prying optics.

Ravage paced from room to room, his smooth prowl still interrupted by the occasional hitch as newly mended limbs refused to obey with all of their former swift grace. The brief pauses, the intermittent limp as autorepair worked to complete a few last peripheral connections, was to be expected, he knew; large chunks of his frame had been replaced by medics after … well, after. Still, it was yet a further unwelcome reminder of how much he had lost, that he was no longer sleek and deadly, but a wounded thing. Broken.

It might not affect his rank, or threaten the information he guarded. But it mattered to *him*, and so he paced, slinking from shadow to shadow as he navigated the confines of the creator-mech's estate. The other inhabitants had been warned to keep their distance, to approach him only upon invitation. Distantly, he appreciated Recast's courtesy; he was in no mood to accommodate sparkling curiosity or explorations.

Still, he could not avoid all interaction entirely. A polite location-ping was reminder of that; a request from Recast to check the status of Ravage's repairs. He was not far from the creator's workshop; reluctantly he decided it was better to get this orn's inevitable inspection out of the way now, rather than force the creator to search him out. With a near-silent vent of resignation, he turned, stalking down the narrow rooftop ledge to leap upon the top of the wall, and from there through the workshop's upper entrances. They had been made with flightframes in mind, not him, but experience and pride both had taught him the value in always approaching from an unexpected direction.

Armored in brilliant indigo and silver, Recast looked up at his approach, giving Ravage a nod of welcome. The creator's studio, unlike some, was meticulously organized, with tools, raw materials, half-finished frames and other mechanoid designs all arranged with an eye for convenience. The serenely efficient layout was quite different from the creative chaos of other creator-workshops Ravage had known, but one he was coming to appreciate.

_/I am here./_

Recast left off his current project-apparently a redesign of his eldest carrier-creation's sensory panels-folding away tools into his frame and wiping off his digits with a solvent-cloth. "Take some time to integrate those," he told the young mech. "I want to see how much simultaneous processing you can handle with that new array while still maintaining a symbiont data-connection load." A distracted nod was his only answer, the carrier already flaring his new appendages, poking curiously at them with taloned fingers.

Only then did Recast look to the symbiont. "The third berth, if you will, Memory-keeper," he said, the ancient glyph-word warm, welcoming.

Ravage chose his own path down to ground floor, in his own good time, eschewing the descending chain of sculpted perches and platforms meant to support flightframes. It made for good practice - calculating exactly how much of his weight this rack of implements could support; how long that neat stack of datapads could bear him before toppling; where he could find good purchase upon the upright and unsparked frame of a carrier, strapped against a wall to save space.

A few items wobbled, an entire paint rack of colored nanites threatened to topple for a single long moment... but nothing fell. Ravage leaped the last two meters from a bench to the floor. It should have been a tiny jump, an easy landing, should have been a single fluid sweep of living blades. Instead, Ravage's left hind limb nearly buckled as he landed on the tiles.

The bladeframe recovered quickly enough from the stumble, lurched himself into his customary liquid prowl, but the failure stung. The young carrier - armor glossy, never scarred - was watching him. Ravage spared the new chronicler a silent snarl as he padded past, to the indicated repair berth. This time, concentrating on every move, he made a flawless jump up to the padded surface.

Ravage stood a moment, watching Recast select his tools. Then, gracefully, the bladeform lay down, reclining on the soft berth top, head erect and one forepaw flexing lightly over the edge. The tip of his tail, blades folded close over the sensors, lashed his silent aggravation.

The mechling was still watching him; Ravage could feel that openly curious gaze like an uneasy prickling down the surface of his armor. He turned his head, deliberately meeting those innocent, still-unvisored optics with a narrowed crimson glare.

The mech didn't immediately look away, surprisingly enough. Caught out by his own curiosity, he held up under Ravage's glare with equanimity, and there was nothing covetous or awestruck in that look. No pity, or regret. Simply … an innocent curiosity, and an open admiration, as if Ravage were something beautiful that he was not allowed to touch. Then the young carrier looked away, inclining his head to Ravage in careful courtesy before going over to a corner of the workshop to rummage amongst the neatly stacked supplies.

Recast's touch was as careful and sure as always, finely-designed fingertips skimming over Ravage's plating as he let the inbuilt sensors scan down past the bladeframe's armor, into the tiny interlocking systems of the symbiont's internals. "Mm-self-repair's still lagging there in your hindquarters, isn't it? Looks like something got rerouted; the nanites aren't working on the damage in proper sequence." Keeping one hand on the affected area, he glanced over at that slowly-tapping tail. "With your permission, Memory-keeper, I need to open this up and make a few adjustments."

Ravage cycled a slow vent. The thick atmosphere of Xyr was cleansing, cooling, provided one did not spend too much time down in the densest part of the solvent haze. _ /Do as you must, creator Recast./_ His glyphs were terse, but were colored with a trace of gratitude. A medic might have more tools at his disposal than a creator - barely, in the case of Recast - but a creator-mech had a feel for the system, functioning as a whole, which most medics could not match. Certainly no repair bot could. This had to be done. It might as well be now.

The symbiont laid his chinplates down on one forepaw, smoothing his sensory spines flat against his neck. Recast's multitool hands were careful, delicate, as he ran a charge through the biggest plating section of the bladeframe's hip, encouraging sensory and power lines to retract, then began unlatching the armor plate. The hidden hinges hitched a little, and Recast paused, made adjustments, opened the dermal armor gently along its transformation seam to expose all the delicate workings underneath.

Ravage watched the newsparked carrier go about his business, new panels held awkwardly, gingerly. He was a big frame to begin with, even for a carrier, and the faintly-trembling spread of those sensory mounts made him seem bigger still. The class was sensitive to information in general, of course - had to be. But Ravage had only rarely seen a build so made for it. There had been a few, many megavorn ago; experimental, they'd not functioned particularly long. Panels that size were too vulnerable, and even when folded, they simply netted too much information. It made a mech distracted, distractable - slow. And, in Ravage's experience, dead.

The bladeframe's optics narrowed a little as the mechling found the device he'd searched for. Not quite a mechanometer in length, and half that wide, it was about the thickness of two talons. The edges were irregularly square, though the thing's dimensions could be changed to provide a more challenging... experience. One of its longer edges bore a series of clawed, mobile connectors, the other was pocked with several rough-cut sockets.

Settling back down on a nearby platform, the carrier scrutinized the practice-drone with a faintly resigned air. Then he began opening the armor protecting his docking slots, the interleaved plating sliding back and outward in layers, until finally the new-made docks stood bare and empty. Turning the drone over in his talons, the mechling activated it. It *bleeped* twice, then shifted, reconfiguring slightly, imitating the slight variations in shape and form that each symbiont had in their docking configurations, primitive socketing receivers extending.

The mechling guided the drone in, trying clumsily to coax it into a docking slot. One cable socketed into place immediately, while the others scraped and failed to join as the drone did its best, in its own mindless way, to search for the remaining connections. It gave an obnoxious warning *bleep* when docking failed, the connectors immediately retracting, and the mechling vented a sigh as he reset the device to reconfigure itself again.

Pretending indifference, Ravage watched out of the corner of his optics. It was both disturbing and amusing to watch such a young carrier. The mechling obviously knew what to do, and just as obviously wasn't nearly as confident about putting theory into practice. The bladeframe didn't envy his first symbiont at all-whoever accepted this mechling's courtship would have quite a bit of training to do. Still … for all the young carrier's fumblings, his concentration never wavered, and the drone never suffered as a result of the mechling's frustration. There were no brief bouts of temper, no new scars added to the drone's rather battered surface.

Above him, Recast hummed a little in satisfaction. "There's the problem, all right," he murmured, more to himself than his erstwhile patient. "Fixed that particular rotor, then decided everything behind it was repaired as well, did you?" Ravage tilted his head a little, wondering briefly if that was aimed at him; but it soon become obvious that Recast was talking to the (utterly unaware) self-repair nanites instead.

"Well, we can't have that. Let's see if we can't redirect your attentions, shall we?" Recast continued, oblivious to the more sentient portions of his audience. Ravage laid his head back down on his forepaw, and caught the mechling's quick, secretive smile as he glanced over in their direction. Apparently his creator's quirks were both well-known and fondly tolerated.

The tips of delicate suction and redistribution tools ghosted over Ravage's delicate internals, light as a stirring in the air, as a draft from an opened door. Even without his armor or a numbing sensor block, it did not hurt.

The drone *bleeped* unhappily again.

Ravage laid his audials back, equally unhappy. Recast moved on to another spot, delicately threading sensors and packet delivery branches down into the bladeframe's internals. "There now. What do you lot think you're coding for? Here we are, that's better..." the creator's vocalizations were smooth, a persuasive croon, as if he could coax Ravage's systems back into harmony with voice alone. Perhaps he could. Creators were simply unfathomable, sometimes.

Ravage lay still while the creator-mech puttered, while the young carrier tried and tried again to complete the act that would be in part his very purpose - and sometimes even succeeded at it. Another chime sounded - this time, the muted interruption of Recast's external comm. The indigo and silver mech paused a moment, withdrawing his tools. Recast laid a palm, multitools closed, on Ravage's flank, a silent signal that the symbiont was being addressed this time. "Will you close your armor for me? You'll need to move a little; we'll see how these changes settle themselves in a half-joor. I believe that's the delivery of a vocal relay assembly I've been waiting for. Will you be alright here for a short time?"

Ravage cast his faceted regard upon the creator-mech. _/Yes,/_ he said, simply, trying to decide if he should be affronted by the allusion that he could not defend himself from a single newly sparked carrier, not ten vorns old. He closed his armor over his delicate internal mechanisms.

With a single gentling pat, Recast nodded, and departed the studio through the irising doorway.

Ravage twisted with slow power, bringing his hindquarters under him, testing the flex of the treated limb. It still twinged, but that faint sense of... wrongness seemed gone, now. He tensed the joint, feeling the parts work against one another, analysing.

The drone *bleeped* again.

Ravage raised his head, jaws parted in a silent snarl. "You are not doing it correctly." Primus. Perhaps the Well would weigh this as a favor towards this mechling's first symbiont. Or towards Recast. The bladeframe flowed to his feet and off the berth in a single motion.

The young carrier neither moved nor made a sound as Ravage padded up to the seating platform. Ravage placed both forepaws on the padded surface, lifting his head to examine the mechling's little drone. It was well-worn - was marked with scuffs and scrapes, as if it had seen a great deal of use over many vorn. And misuse, to judge by the dents... and the one partially-crushed corner, and the thin smear of leaked energon along one edge. Wonderful.

Still, there was nothing strictly wrong with it, Ravage decided, twisting to regard the young carrier. This close, the youngling's EM field was intense, clear. Similar, in a way, to... well. The symbiont killed that processor thread, and settled for jumping up next to the young carrier instead. If this were a more experienced carrier, Ravage would never have approached so close. It would not have been... strictly proper to do so. But there was no other bonded cohort here, none to look on Ravage with worried or jealous or avaricious optics. None to show this mechling what he must do.

It was probably a simple error, anyway. "In what sequence do you engage the guidance magnets?" Ravage asked. He steadied himself with one taloned paw on the mechling's thigh armor, to more closely examine the exposed docking slots. And froze, in the middle of a tail-lash. He'd seen six docking slots from the berth, before - a fairly high capacity to begin with. But despite the way the mechling's interleaving sheets of armor twitched, as if to reflexively pull back together, Ravage could see now that there were two more docks to either side, partially covered at present.

In all the eons of his existence, of all the hundreds of thousands of hosts he'd met and known and lost, Ravage could count the number of carriers framed for ten on the talons of one forepaw. He remembered a time when carriers had been most commonly built for two symbionts. Eight could strain even a strong carrier's resources to the breaking point. Ten... what had Recast been *thinking*?

The mechling clearly favored his middle-right slot. The drone had left scrapes there - both silvery new gouges, and faded ones as much as an orn old. The narrow cavity was wetted, too, with traces of energon and coolant. Sometime over the past joor, the drone had more than simply make a poor connection and leak. The thing had nicked lines, had spilled a little of the mechling's fluids. Probably not for the first time, either. The young carrier's armor might never have known injury, but his internals surely had.

"Second laterals, then primary anteriors," came the answer. The mechling tilted his head, regarding the bladeframe. "Query: sequence incorrect?"

Pleasantly surprised at the lack of argument or defensiveness from the mechling-carriers could be very prickly if their competence was questioned, especially newly-framed ones, who often felt the need to prove themselves-Ravage tilted his head. "Activate primary anteriors first," he suggested. "But *don't* pull-let them support the weight during docking, and use the laterals and your tertiaries for finer maneuvering." The first way, while technically correct, also required a great deal more skill on the part of the carrier mech to manipulate several sets of guidance gravs at once in addition to ensuring the docking sequences were correct. The second was a bit of a cheat, and it took longer to do, but it was easier for an inexperienced-or impaired-mech to handle.

The young carrier nodded. "Assistance, appreciated," he said, and promptly tried the docking sequence again, faceplates folding into a frown of concentration as he followed Ravage's advice. This time, the drone docked correctly; though Ravage noted that there was the barest flicker of a wince as the connectors socketed home.

The mechling seemed sincere. His final vocal relay assemblies had clearly not integrated fully, leaving his speech patterns strangely modulated, though not unpleasantly so. Perhaps the young carrier's relay equipment was unsuited to him, and would be replaced with the new device which Recast expected. The symbiont looked to where the drone was humming faintly as it cycled its false systems with the young carrier's own, the sideplates of the dock hugging comfortable and close around it. Perhaps that was good enough, then.

That faint trace of spilled enegon, dampening the rim of the drone-occupied slot, gave Ravage pause. And... until Recast returned, there'd be little else to do, anyway. The bladeframe looked back up to the young carrier's wide optics. "It should not hurt, nor cause discomfort," he stated, then paused a moment, extending senses that had been inactive since... well. For a long time, after his sensors had failed him in the deep drift of space, Ravage'd had no interest in finding other mecha. Now, he located the nearby energy signature of the creator-mech. Recast was, apparently, still occupied elsewhere. "Go ahead and eject. Can you fold those?" Ravage growled, indicating the new panels across the mechling's back. "Enough to lie flat?"

The carrier nodded. "Technique, still incorrect," he said glumly, allowing the drone to disengage from the slot and setting it to one side. His sensor panels folded back and downward, retracting inward in the same movement, until only about a third of their former surface was still exposed, extending downwards from the carrier's backplates.

It was a fascinating adaptation, Ravage had to admit. Not only had that broad expanse of terribly vulnerable surface area been reduced, but the sensitive surfaces, laden with sensory arrays, had pivoted inward at the same time so that they were sheltered between the young carrier's backplates and the hard supporting carapace on the back of the panels. Recast must have been working on this particular upgrade for quite some time. "Perhaps," Ravage said in answer to the mechling's assertion. The carrier made a motion as if to close the armor over his docking slots, and Ravage hissed sharply. "Not yet. Let me see."

The mechling looked a bit dubious, but lay back on the platform after another interrogative prod of a taloned forepaw.

With easy grace, Ravage leaped up onto the glossy plating of the young carrier's abdominal armor, his talons extended just enough to afford him purchase, without unduly scratching the tough nanite topcoat. He padded up to the open cavity of the mechling's chest.

From this angle, the subtle tilt to all the slots was a little more obvious. They were level, in most carriers, and usually arranged so that two or three were banked on one side, two or three on the other. The center was often armored, or used to rack extra quantum drives, which were quite dense. That was so because of the bulk of the spark casing, just behind. In most carriers, there simply wasn't room for docks and a spark in the same central placement.

The extra size of this frame helped alleviate that limitation, to some extent, allowing for central placement of slots over the spark chamber. The angle of the slots helped more. But... the extra docks meant that the carrier's spark chamber could benefit from no extra armor, save the thin wafers of the docking mechanisms, and of course the extremely dense plating that shielded those.

Ravage sat down on those open chestplates, tail curling around his feet, stunned. A strike powerful enough to breach that primary armor and crush the rank of docked cassettes would, almost inevitably, kill this host as well. It... did not seem to make sense. No other carrier was built this way.

Ravage wondered if it would feel different, docking with a carrier like this. One without those extra layers of armor between the rank of cassettes and the heavy thrum-pulse of the carrier's spark.

The mechling lifted his head, regarding the bladeframe on his chest with puzzled concern. "Query: problem found? Internals, malfunctioning?" He lifted a hand, touched the still-open gap gingerly, as if suddenly afraid it would spit sparks or start leaking energon.

"No," Ravage said hastily, feeling the prickle of building apprehension in the mechling's field. He had forgotten for a moment that he wasn't dealing with an experienced carrier, but a subadult mecha, innocent and uncertain. "No," he said again. "No problem. You just have a very … unique configuration." He eyed the banks of docking slots. If he were to try and dock in such a carrier, he would have to angle himself … thus, several degrees higher than was normally customary. He pinged the mechling, offering the suggested adjustments to the drone's orientation. "Try this. It should make docking easier for you," Ravage said, hoping to distract the young carrier.

Recast, on the other hand, would have to answer a few questions as soon as he returned. What had the creator-mech been thinking? The sensor panels were bad enough; why would he risk leaving his creation's spark-chamber bare of armor, just to accommodate a few extra symbionts?

The mechling processed the new information. "Assistance: appreciated," he said, then, "query: advise practice now?" He reached beside him for the false cassette.

"No." Ravage paused, lowered his head. The rim of the docking slot was warm, the magnets and grav units there still heated with a residual charge that felt like welcome... felt like coming home. Ravage's most slender sensory whiskers brushed against the bottom of one docking slot. Small calipers in the aperture moved despite their owner's effort to keep still, plates and guidance rails twitching, grasping upon nothing. The bladeframe knew full well how they'd feel around him. He lifted his head.

The docking slots for a carrier were complex, able to physically handle a small symbiont - capable of folding down to a width no greater than a symbiont's own sculpted, narrow spark chamber - or one as large as Ravage himself. Of course, whether the young carrier actually understood how to accomplish the reconfiguration... was an entirely different affair. All the mechling's slots were presently set to accommodate a symbiont of medium build.

The creator-mech, Recast, was still occupied elsewhere. Ravage flexed his claws a little, prickling at the edges of the mechling's armor. This was not his carrier. And this thing he was contemplating... was so far departed from protocol, he shouldn't even have permitted it to cross his processors. And yet... "Have you practiced with larger drones? Or just this size?" asked Ravage.

The carrier looked at him, as if not sure if he understood Ravage correctly. "Negative; this is the largest available." He paused thoughtfully. "Your recommendation, seek out larger drone for practice?" Young the carrier might be, but even he knew not to presume to extend an invitation to a symbiont not his own.

Ravage regarded the young mech's prone form, gleaming silver and cobalt under the lights of the workshop, his chassis still open and exposed. Waiting patiently for whatever Ravage might tell him, either utterly oblivious to the damage a bladeframe could cause in such a position, or … trusting Ravage to not take advantage of his vulnerability. It was … a little unnerving.

Abruptly, Ravage turned away, leaping to the floor in one swift motion and an aggravated lash of his tail. "Your decision," he snapped, suddenly irritated with himself. What was he doing? He was no nannybot. "Either way, you need to learn to adjust your internals prior to docking. Go ask Recast if you don't know how."

The carrier sat up, folding the armor back over his chest and watching Ravage thoughtfully. "Soundwave: acknowledges." He glanced down at the drone, picking up the inert mechanism and turning it over in his hands thoughtfully. "Your assistance, appreciated," he offered to Ravage's retreating form. "Thank you."

The bladeframe snarled, an oddly short gesture of irritation, as he padded to the doorway. The hatch irised open for him, letting in a breath of cool air, scented with solvent mists and the metallic tang of the crystal gardens. Ravage paused. He could still feel the residual trace of the mechling's strong field across his sensory whiskers. There was nothing in all the universe that felt as warmly, perfectly safe as a carrier's dock. But that security, as Ravage knew all too well, was a fragile illusion. "Ask Recast to ping me when he is ready," Ravage said, and left.


	2. Chapter 2

Cowrite with HopeofDawn, set in the very distant past of her excellent Giants of the Earth saga, available on archiveofourown(dot)com

Warnings for... alien biology, alien cultural practices, tentacles, symbiotic relationship, fluff, possible sensuality? T+ rating. Kinda.

.

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For the next seven orn, Ravage stalked the mechling.

He could even justify it to himself, in a manner of speaking. Cassettes were creatures of knowledge, and deprived of the ability to pursue their favorite subjects for a time, they would turn to studying nearly anything. Even, apparently, the activities of a carrier not yet fully framed. Which didn't explain at all why Ravage put such effort into his observations - forsaking both luxurious quarter-orn recharges in the suns and extended sessions with Recast's admittedly excellent network connection - in favor of trailing along after a sparkling.

Well. Not quite a sparkling. There were two of those around, and Ravage paid them little heed. Without Recast's constant tinkering, Soundwave would probably have gone to his first bonding ceremony already, or at least begun searching for suitable mecha with whom to form his cohort. But in this, at least, Recast was similar to most creator-mecha; unwilling to announce his art complete, he continued to refine and tweak his work, modifying the young carrier with one last finishing touch after another.

Soundwave bore the attention with patient grace. And Ravage watched him.

The mechling endured his creator's changes at least once an orn, sometimes for mere breem, sometimes for much longer - great swaths of his armor folded back, components disassembled, fine internal mechanisms bared to the world. Twice Recast attempted to coax into place a new vocal relay assembly, a complicated procedure which resulted in no particular change to the mechling's vocalizations. Three times, Recast teased apart so many of the mechling's dorsal panels that it looked like the young carrier had been peeled open, the quicksilver of his protoform gleaming under the workshop lights, in order to meddle with the complex arrangement of data manipulator cables housed there.

And once, his abdominal plates folded back and Recast murmuring in his internals, Soundwave turned his head, his unshielded optics happening upon Ravage, who crouched in the shadows of the upper level flightframe entrances. The mechling smiled, that same quick, secretive gesture of fond tolerance, of dry and innocent amusement.

Ravage retreated.

Watching a carrier be opened like that was bad enough. Seeing this one so disassembled ... was somehow worse. But the next time the young carrier went in for modifications, Ravage was back. This time, at a less easily visible window.

Fully completed or not, the mechling apparently had no learning impediment. Far from it. He practiced devotedly with each new upgrade, undissuaded by failure and unsatisfied with anything but perfection. He was already as skilled with all three pairs of primary cables as carriers several times his age, spending joor at a time simply picking up and manipulating delicate objects with them. He spent long periods silently sorting through sets of practice data, performing the processor-heavy calculations that a symbiont was simply not capable of handling, transferring pentabytes at a time between terminals. The mechling was even competent at hardlining his little cassette-shaped drone... though Ravage could usually detect that brief, faint flinch on the young carrier's faceplates.

Docking the thing was still another matter entirely.

On the rooftop across the square, Ravage paced with his hunter's grace, head low, watching the mechling go about his all-too-frequent ritual. Soundwave had learned to retrieve a square of fine metal-mesh cloth and a bowl of solvent first. He placed the objects beside the berth, then went to retrieve the drone. The mechling handled the thing with care, with resigned respect, as he uncased it and sat slowly on the edge of his berth. From this angle, Ravage could not see the carrier slide the sheets of his armor back to expose the fine slotting mechanisms. But he knew when the drone docked and linked its internals with the mechling's - knew it by the minute tremble of the young carrier's folded sensory panels.

The young carrier sat quietly for a breem, while the drone finished cycling its false systems. The mechling removed it with the same gentle touch, and then dipped the square of cloth into the bowl of cleansing solvent. He attended to the drone first, carefully wiping away the thin slick of spilled energon. Then, cycling a vent, he reached gingerly into his own internals. Here, with no one to see, the young carrier allowed more of his pain to show, his unshielded faceplates twisting in an expression of unhappy discomfort as he carefully daubed at his internal docks, guiding the cloth by touch and tertiary sensors rather than optical output. Ravage tensed as the mesh-cloth re-emerged-but while it sported fresh energon stains, there appeared to be only a small amount, not enough to indicate any real damage.

The sight should have been reassuring; instead, much to his own chagrin, he found it only bothered him more. Docking shouldn't ever cause a carrier pain. Not even with a drone. The idea that Recast might have created a chronicler who would have to suffer every time a symbiont needed to recharge was a profoundly disturbing thought. Coupled with his other observations, it made Ravage wonder if he truly knew the creator-mech as well as he thought he did, or if the mech's kindness concealed some manner of corrupted code or other malfunction, one that expressed itself in his creations. The young carrier did not act fearful or erratic that Ravage had observed, and what he had seen of Recast's younger sparklings had been well within the bounds of normal behavior. Still … Ravage stifled the urge to growl, his tail lashing in indecision.

He still hadn't moved from his position, unsure of how best to proceed, when the hatch to the young carrier's room irised open. He froze. Was it Recast? But the mechling was setting the cloth to one side, closing the open panels over his chassis and smiling a little in welcome. A small helm edged around the door, optics peering around the corner; then the sparkling bounced inside, running over to its elder sibling.

The sparkling symbiont was very young in comparison-barely past base hatchling stage, with only a few small additions to its protoform. It appeared to be a mechkin in design, though it was too early for anyone other than his creator to know for sure; lacking any specialized modifications as of yet, he ran on two legs and four with equal facility, switching back and forth at a whim. The sparkling streaked across the floor and swarmed up the older carrier's leg-armor in a blur of silver-bronze talons and armor, leaping from surface to surface until it had settled itself happily into the older mech's lap. The mechling-Soundwave-tilted his head downward, and appeared to be saying something. Curious, Ravage boosted the gain on his sensory-spines. When that wasn't sufficient, he prowled slowly closer, creeping out onto an extended cornice to attain an adequate listening distance.

"-ery: where is Crosswise?"

"Has helm in the pool again." The sparkling burrowed under his elder sibling's talons in a blatant bid for attention. "Doesn't want to play. Too busy growing, he said."

The sparkling wriggled vigorously as the young carrier's talons began stroking idly, finding all the places that itched and tickled. At this stage, the sparkling was mainly protoform, protected only by wafer-thin scales and armed only with the tiny delicate claws it had used to split its hatchling pouch. But in the way of all symbionts, it had already started to incorporate sensor nodes, eschewing the quantum hard drives that a newspark typically first favored. A symbiont needed no hardware to store memory.

Ravage watched Soundwave tilt his head. "Query: growing *what*?" A fine question, and one the answer to which Ravage was likewise eager to learn. Was Recast doing something to...

"He wants them growing up all over his helm," the sparkling cheeped, mixing pronoun-glyphs without apparent regard for intelligibility, and thoroughly pleased with the attentions he received. New incorporations itched something awful. He wriggled his talons atop his own small helm in illustration of these much-anticipated adornments. "They're gonna be this big and super spiky! Crosswise is going to be a Rock Lord when he grows up. He's gonna look like Ravage. But bigger. Also more sparklier."

"Query: Crosswise no longer intends to become a cityformer?" Soundwave inquired. A cityformer was a Cybertronian, at least. And a Rock Lord was not. Neither, of course, particularly resembled bladeframes - sparkly or otherwise - so far as Ravage was aware.

Soundwave's facile line of inquiry won him a miniature look of disdain and, possibly, pity from the sparkling. Other mecha dumped their memory stacks disturbingly often, in Motif's opinion, as if they weren't paying attention properly. It was a serious fault, but Motif knew they did the best they could. "No. That was *last* orn. He can change his mind." Motif twisted to offer up his thin abdominal plates - they were itchy too. "Everybody gets to, if they want. You, too," the sparkling said, as if he'd heard it before, and all too often.

Soundwave hummed a little, accepting the sparkling's assertion. "Motif: also changing mind?"

Those tiny faceplates furrowed in thought. "Maybe? Want to be more bigger."

"Your goal, entirely attainable," Soundwave assured him.

"Big as Recast! Big as you!"

Soundwave hesitated, the gentle strokes pausing. "That goal, perhaps not as achievable," he said carefully. The sparkling wiggled impatiently, grabbing at a talon with his feet, and he resumed his petting. "Motif, wants carrier? Wants to be safe and warm?"

"Yes! Be safe and warm and *big*," came the immediate reply.

Soundwave shook his helm, a smile escaping at the reply. "Motif: will have to find extra-large carrier, then," he said. He stood up, lifting the sparkling to sit on his shoulder. "Soundwave: will find Crosswise before helm grows too big. Affirmative?"

"Affirmative!" Motif chirped, balancing easily, talons hooked into the seams of his sibling's armor.

Outside, Ravage snarled silently. What manner of horror did the creator-mech mean to wreak upon a mere hatchling? Did he mean to author some twisted combination of carrier and bladeform and... Rock Lord? The bladeframe shook his head, lacking the capacity to even imagine why anyone would attempt to mutilate a sparkling carrier's helm. Soundwave was clearly being built with an eye towards the coming war, towards desperate times and suicidal measures... what mad juggernaut did Recast think to create next?

Ravage could not simply ignore a travesty like this. As silent and dark as the shadows themselves, he slipped from his vantage, leaping down to the irising window port. He activated it with a code scrambler, forbearing to use his own access code - no reason to leave a trace now. His rear quarters still twinged a little, ached, but not enough now to slow him. Sensors alert, the bladeframe dropped down into Soundwave's berth chamber.

The air tasted of the young carrier and the imprint of his EM field: cool, deep, spilled energon a lingering sweetness. The space was sparse, simple, elegant - the only disarray a few datapads still piled on one low platform. There were very few personal effects - a handful of shiny things such as a hatchling might collect all heaped in a carved stoneware bowl; a few pieces of the ceremonial netting a carrier often wore at their first bonding, tools for cleaning and most minor maintenance. Head low, sensory whiskers forward, Ravage followed the mechling with all the skill of a creature sparked to stalk, knife-teeth a narrow glint of murder in his mouth.

The young carrier led him on a winding route, so much that Ravage feared he'd been discovered. Soundwave kept pausing to activate the doors into empty quarters. "Query: Crosswise here?" he asked with flat seriousness, though it was patently obvious the carrier hatchling was not. His inquiry was inevitably met with squeals of mirth from the hatchling symbiont he carried.

At length, however, Soundwave exited the living quarters, walked down a low ramp of crushed crystal, to a landing where solvent mists lapped around his ankles. Ravage came to a hard halt. The carrier hatchling, already twice Motif's size, knelt beside the lapping pool from which grew the compound's massive titanium dioxide crystal. "Query: Crosswise here?" Soundwave repeated, as if he could not see for himself the unmoving lump of the hatchling's body, upper half submerged in the pool.

Despite himself, despite megavorn of hard-won experience, Ravage could not keep the trickling snarl from his vocalizer. He struck before Soundwave had even begun to turn, struck like living lightning, chips of crystal exploding up under paws. He had the carrier hatchling's back between his teeth in a nanosecond, dragging Crosswise away from the pond, tumbling him under Ravage's own body - he could not carry a creature so thinly armored in his mouth without piercing it through. Hissing violently, he rounded on Soundwave, not certain if the young carrier was a threat. "Stay back," he snarled, every hackle and blade of him erect.

Soundwave stopped abruptly, optics wide and startled as he was confronted by the angry bladeframe. Motif meeped in fear, ducking behind the elder carrier's helm, hunkering down as if he could tuck himself inside Soundwave's armor.

"Acknowledged," the mechling said, his assumed calm fraying at the edges of his field, but still holding firm. He hesitated, optics flickering to where Crosswise lay half-hidden behind Ravage's taloned feet, then to the bladeframe's snarling expression and lashing tail. "Actions, not understood. Memory-keeper Ravage: will tell us how we offend?"

Ravage snarled again. How glitched was this mechling? Was he so damaged by his creator he could not see what was right before his optics? "Offend?" he snapped. "If you think I will stand by and allow-"

"-hey!" The indignant shout caught Ravage by surprise, especially since it-came from underneath him? He blinked, twisting his head downward-and met the indignant optics of the carrier sparkling. A sparkling who was, near as he could tell, completely normally formed, save for a fine dusting of accumulated crystals over the top half of his frame. "I wasn't done growing yet!" the sparkling huffed, crossing spindly arms as he glared at his erstwhile savior. "*And* you broke my crystals! Now I gotta start all over again."

Silence, for a long, long moment. "Your... what?" said Ravage.

"My crystals!" The sparkling affirmed, stretching both little arms overhelm, blunt fingers outspread. The gesture caused the sparkling to shed some of his dusting of mineral deposits and very tiny crystals. "They were *practically* this big, almost!"

Motif peeped up over Soundwave's helm, still nervous, but wanting desperately to see. "They were?"

"Yeah, they were! You need 'em, if you wanna become a Rock Lord."

Motif knew perfectly well how much Crosswise wanted to become a Rock Lord, even if everyone else had failed to archive that important data. Which they probably had. The symbiont sparkling turned accusing optics on Ravage.

Ravage had witnessed the passage of eons. Entire ages of Cybertron had flowed past under his watchful gaze. There were a handful of symbionts, perhaps, who could equal his vast comprehension, his sheer depth of knowledge; none surpassed him. The bladeframe had, quite literally, seen everything.

He'd never experienced this before.

He took an uncertain step backwards; then sat down rather abruptly, curling tail around forefeet as he tried to deal with his consternation and salvage some remnant of his dignity. "You were … growing crystals."

"Yes!"

"On your helm."

"Ahuh!"

"Because … you want to be a Rock Lord." No, Ravage decided. Repeating it didn't make the idea any less bizarre.

"Yup!" The little carrier climbed to his pedes, flaring crystal-dusted plating proudly, oblivious to Ravage's confusion. "I'm gonna be sparklier. And bigger, and spiky-like you!"

Finding himself out of his depth, Ravage looked over at the older carrier, silently asking for help. He wasn't sure if this was sparkling-logic or carrier-logic, but either way, it didn't make any sense. Though at least he apparently didn't need to worry about Recast somehow mutilating his creations ….

Soundwave folded himself down on his pedes, stretching out an open hand in an unsubtle invitation-though whether the invitation was for Crosswise or Ravage, the bladeframe wasn't sure. "Memory-keeper Ravage: concerned for your safety," he said calmly, though it was clear he still wasn't quite sure *why* the symbiont would be concerned. Crosswise darted over, climbing onto the proffered hand without hesitation, while Motif clambered down from Soundwave's shoulder to inspect his sibling's newly-glittery surface. "Crystals on helm, very impressive," he assured the little carrier. "Crystals in vents, not as impressive. Query: Recast needs to clean you again?"

"Nooo..." The hatchling drew out the glyph in a thin warble as he looked up at the older carrier. Seriously and a little secretively, he added, "He never says anything. But I kinda don't think Recast even *wants* me to be a Rock Lord."

Ravage's razor-edged plating clicked at the leaves slowly folded flat along his chassis. The bladeframe looked to the nearest roofline - he could make the jump from here - then back to the young carrier. He dipped his head. Let it not be said that an old bladeframe could not land on his feet. "Crosswise. I observed" -_battled-_ "Rock Lords upon many occasions. I once witnessed them carry crystals; I never saw the same affixed to their helms. Nor anyplace on them."

The sparkling peered at Ravage over Soundwave's fingers, so intent he failed to notice Motif prod his small talons at the tiny, mineral-dusted slits of his vents. Crosswise was very proud of them. He was so big, he needed two whole vents now. "Nuh-uh. I read Talecraft's exobestiary. There was a picture of 'em right on the front of the datablock."

''Em' was probably 'Rock Lords'. Ravage arched an optical ridge, idly making an effort to count the vorns since his expertise had been questioned. In front of him, anyway. "Talecraft is a hack." He watched the sparkling's expression fall. Primus. "When you are larger, I will see that those memories are shared with you, that you might see for yourself," he said abruptly, hoping only to forestall a tantrum, realizing too late that he'd offered up a treasure - first-hand experience of a time lost to memory - that was by rights the property only of Ravage's own chosen carrier, a prize that a sparkling would not even begin to comprehend.

Soundwave, at least, was cognizant of the implications of Ravage's offer, his optics wide and startled. Crosswise, happily oblivious, leaned over the older carrier's talon-tips. "Really? Really real memories?" He didn't have any of those yet, not even from Motif! Just his own, which weren't nearly as interesting.

Slag. Caught out by his own impulsive promise, Ravage inclined his head, smoothing back the last few bristling plates along his spine. "You have my word. But only when you are old enough." Somehow he doubted the little mech would forget his promise, either. What in Primus' name had possessed him to do that? Perhaps he was glitched? It seemed the only logical explanation.

"A real memory!" Crosswise bounced a little, jittering in excitement. "Gotta go find Creator. Come on, Motif-gotta go grow up *now*!" His sibling-creation's enthusiasm was infectious; Motif squeaked in agreement and the two of them bounced to the ground and streaked for the main building, no doubt to demand that Recast give them their adult frames Right Now.

Soundwave vented a small sigh, one hand creeping up to rub at the back of one audial fin, but made no attempt to call them back. "Soundwave: apologizes for their discourtesy, Memory-keeper. Your offer, exceedingly generous."

Ravage likewise cycled a slow vent, watching the doorway iris open for the tumbling little hatchlings, one of whom shed tiny motes of mineral glitter as he ran. The very doorframe, he saw, had been constructed with exceedingly small mechs in mind. The irising plates folded down flush into the ground, leaving no doorjamb to be climbed over, no crack or depression that could catch at soft small talons.

The bladeframe's optics flicked back to the young carrier, studying, assaying. He, Ravage, might be glitched, but the mechling was probably not - or at least, not deliberately - all Ravage's unfounded suspicions aside. "I seem to have been operating under a false assumption," said Ravage, declining to explain further at the moment. It was, in a way, easier to speak with a carrier to whom he owed no bond of obedience. Or harder. Difficult to say. At the least, it set Soundwave apart from Ravage's last carrier, and that... helped.

Ravage stood, plates shifting a little to shed the tiny chips of crushed crystal that had managed to work their way under his hide. The solvent pond lapped quietly, just a few steps away. _/Come,/ _he said, feeling across the bandwidth for Soundwave's preferred frequency. _/Let us go examine that drone of yours more closely./_

_._

Just when he thought he was getting a handle on things … _/... acknowledged, Memory-keeper,/ _ Soundwave said in response to that order, more than a bit nonplussed. A false assumption? What kind of assumption was there to make regarding sparklings? He fell in obediently, walking next to the bladeframe as Ravage led the way back to his quarters. At least the walk gave him a little bit of time to think, even if those thoughts were a bit … conflicted. Most especially about Ravage's extraordinary offer to Crosswise, of all mecha. What had possessed the bladeframe to offer up such a treasured memory to a sparkling?

Curiosity finally drove him to ask. "Memory-keeper Ravage: permission to make a query?"

Ravage slanted the mechling a narrow look, but nodded briefly.

"Query: is Ravage … interested in Crosswise?" He had never before heard of any symbiont forming an attachment to a carrier so young, but-it was the only thing he could think of that might explain the symbiont's protectiveness, the offer of such an extraordinary gift. Could a symbiont even survive through the vorns it would take for Crosswise to mature enough to bond? Or was there some other force driving the bladeframe? Perhaps, faced with his inability to save his former master, Ravage now wished to have a new carrier, one that he *could* protect?

Ravage nearly stumbled. Primus. The novel and uncomfortable new experiences just kept coming in this place, didn't they? "*What?* You believe -" Ravage snapped his jaws together with a heavy metallic shearing. He reset his vocalizer, concerned that shock might have disrupted his usual rumbling baritone. "No. I do not care for the sparkling." Beyond, of course, the fact that he'd laid fangs on an utterly helpless carrier. That act... was little short of unconscionable. Unmannerly, too.

His statement made it sound as if he was concealing something, didn't it? Ravage held his head low as he paced in the young carrier's shadow, heavy between the upright blades of his shoulders. Even in his present situation, the bladeframe could not help but notice that his gait naturally matched the mechling's - perhaps because Soundwave was longer in the leg than most carriers. "I believed that you, and perhaps they, were assembled wrongly. By your creator," Ravage explained. He was silent for a moment, aware of how bizarre that now sounded. The off-kilter logic of this place was seeping into him; there was no other explanation for it.

"That appears not to be the case." Ravage glanced briefly at the mechling, optics narrowed, then issued his code to the compound's internal doors and prowled ahead into Soundwave's quarters. As if he had not been there just a breem or two ago, Ravage ghosted the perimeter, familiarizing himself once more with the layout and content of the rooms. The force of long habit demanded no less.

"Ravage: believed we were defective?" Soundwave stopped just inside his quarters, honestly baffled. And more than a little hurt, truth be told, though he did his best to keep it from resonating in his field. After all, to a symbiont of Ravage's age and rank, he and his sibling-creations probably couldn't help but come up … lacking.

Soundwave took the few steps necessary to reach his berth and sat down on it, lacing talons together. He reached for the comforting familiarity of his analytical routines, running what he had observed of Ravage's movements and trying to formulate hypotheses based on what the symbiont might have experienced. "Evidence of malfunctioning, found in behavior? Ravage, offended or maltreated in some way?"

The bladeframe flowed out of the small storage room, stalking straight for the berth. Uninvited, he jumped up and seated himself beside the unresponsive drone, where it still lay after the Soundwave's attempt to practice with it, his sensor-laden tail-tip curling around his feet. "Neither," he said, avoiding answering the first question. Because he *had* believed the mechling defective, hadn't he? Ravage laid his audials flat. "Your conformation, however, is far from standard. Your panels, the extra docking slots, three pairs of primaries and *nine* of secondaries? And this." Ravage laid a paw on the drone's flat, battered surface, his talons leaving puckered dents in the thin plating. "What was I to conclude?"

Soundwave cycled his optics. The revelation that Ravage considered his sensory arrays, his extra data cables a-liability? somehow excessive?-was an uncomfortable one. Perhaps Recast had been right to worry? If other symbionts shared Ravage's opinion … "Soundwave: requested additional sensory panels, data-cables from creator. Previous data-transfer and reception capabilities were too limited, not adequate for optimal processing speeds. Resulting bottlenecks, frustrating," he confessed. He shifted a little, glancing over his shoulder to the folded panels in question. Recast had worked for over a vorn to design them, ensuring they were integrated both functionally and aesthetically with Soundwave's frame. "Data processing now optimal," he said, trying to reassure the symbiont. "Multi-threaded calculation and transfer speeds now dynamically balanced, much more efficient."

Being restricted to only a few petabytes of data every nanoklik, all of it requiring barely a third of his processing threads to handle - even if he deliberately slowed his clock-cycles and introduced redundant analyses - had left Soundwave half out of his helm with boredom and frustration. It had been that more than anything that had convinced Recast past his own misgivings; and even with Ravage's evident disapproval, Soundwave couldn't regret having the upgrades done. He had *needed* them, in a very real and visceral way.

As to the drone … he vented a sigh. "Drone docking, very frustrating," he admitted. "Technique obviously requiring refinement."

Ravage went quietly still as Soundwave spoke. He was aware, of course, that a Creator-mech's works took some hand in shaping themselves - though rarely, to his knowledge, as much as this one apparently had. But... *bottleneck?* *Balanced?* No, it was just...

It was impossible for a mech, already burdened with docking slots, to carry that much data processing equipment - not even with the newest technologies, the latest, most bleeding-edge seven and eight-dimensional assemblies. Impossible... unless. "That - was it you, who refused the extra spark chamber armor?" Ravage demanded.

At the mechling's nod, Ravage grit his long teeth. It made a terrible kind of sense. That much data processing was possible... for a very large mech. One who had specialized every relay for massive data loads, rather than allotting great swaths of processor space to the usual social and empathy programming. One who chose to forfeit every scrap of redundant equipment, every secondary and non-vital slab of armor, down even to the spark chamber shielding. One who'd forsaken even the smallest of internal weapons. And...

Ravage realized, quite suddenly, what else a slightly-glitched young carrier might have jettisoned to make room. He growled. "What about your major anterior symbiont baffles?" Thick-folded layers at the back of each docking slot, they provided extra filtering and bolstering, to prevent a symbiont from making too tight a connection and damaging its carrier. Those mechanical filters and failsafes were bulky, but advisable for the carrier's own protection - and therefore standard-issue.

Soundwave glanced down at his folded talons. "Symbiont baffles, not... strictly necessary," he said. They'd been huge, anyway - took up more space than the extra two pairs of primary datacables and another processor relay combined. The shallower docks made it easy to fit a few more of them in, too. "Query: lack of baffles interfering with docking technique?"

Only then did Ravage realize: nothing about this carrier was standard-issue.

Despite himself, he had to wonder how much more information a carrier like this could access from him. Not just a handful of carefully pared-down data streams at a time, but rather...

Ravage's claws flexed. He pinned the drone down with both forefeet. "Perhaps. You will therefore refine your technique... with me," Ravage said. And then he slowly, deliberately, drew one set of talons down the cassette-shaped drone. His serrated-knife claws shredded the thing through its full thickness, slicing it into ribbons of twisted steel and twitching cables. He'd probably left scratches in the berthtop. Ravage did not care. The bladeframe paused in the middle of flexing his talons to clear them of small broken pieces. "Tell me you've already inquired into adjusting your slot width," he said, suddenly worried.

Soundwave twitched at the slow screech of the bladeframe's claws, watching in appalled fascination as the drone was gutted. "... Recast, consulted," he confirmed. "Full datafiles obtained, practiced to the extent of drone adjustments." Ravage wanted to allow Soundwave to practice? On *him*? The offer made Soundwave want to scan the area, shift his armor defensively forward in anticipation of an angry carrier's wrath … but Ravage no longer had a carrier from whom to ask permission. And it wasn't as if the bladeframe wasn't perfectly capable of defending himself. The remains of the drone made that abundantly clear.

"Memory-keeper Ravage's concern, appreciated," he said cautiously, not wishing to seem argumentative. "Soundwave: does not wish to cause you discomfort or damage." Or for that matter, do anything that might damage Ravage's ability to find a new carrier, though the symbiont's rank made that, at least, vanishingly unlikely.

Ravage made a brusque, hissing sound. "The elimination of discomfort and damage is the point of this exercise." He fixed the young carrier with a expectant stare.

Still dubious, Soundwave nonetheless knew a losing battle when he saw one. He could refuse, or call on Recast for input. But it was frustrating that he could not master this one simple thing; this most basic of functions. If a veteran symbiont could help him … was in fact *insisting* on helping him … Soundwave found he couldn't bring himself to refuse. Slowly, as if giving Ravage time to reconsider, he retracted the plates over his chassis, baring his docks to the waiting bladeframe.

Ravage padded closer, stepped up onto the carrier's armored thigh plates. He laid a paw - the same one as had eviscerated the drone, Soundwave could not help but note - on the lower edge of the docking space, and stretched his neck up to nose at the slots. Recalling what Ravage had told him, Soundwave set about making the necessary adjustments. With sharp, mechanical precision, the docks began their own limited transformation sequence, small gears whirring to slat each assembly apart, to spread each heavy plate-wall.

Whether by accident or design, the mechling was resetting *all* his docks to maximum. Ravage looked up. So long as he was playing the instructor, he might as well do a thorough job of it. "When you adjust them all to a symbiont's size, like this, it will be understood as an potent and direct invitation. It is the broadest visible expression of welcome you can issue to a symbiont." Ravage paused. "Do not do this before another carrier, especially if you are courting the same symbiont." If Soundwave was endeavoring to tempt away an already-bonded symbiont, this gesture would absolutely get the mechling shot. Ravage was old and his self-control excellent, but even still, the mechling's innocent display was an unmistakable lure.

With Soundwave spread like this, Ravage could see the waiting connectors at the back of each dock, bare of the normal filters and baffles. The hollows were warm, too, in a way he'd not quite understood before - without armor or shielding or filters, the heat of the carrier's spark radiated out undiffused, clear and clean, laced with energies like ribbons of cobalt, hovering just beyond the optical range.

The slot with which Soundwave had attempted to practice was... wounded. There was no other word for it - scars laid on over scars. The scrapes were minor and the dock would heal, probably perfectly and without much attention, but there were places where the drone had simply gouged, torn the thin plating. And the connectors in back looked like...

Ravage was pleased that he had already mauled the drone. Had he not, he would have felt obliged to turn away and slay the thing at once.

The other nine slots, however, were pristine. The metal was still glossy with the coating used to encourage a mechling's own protoform to thread itself through a new component, to imbue metal with life. Soundwave had clearly never tried inserting the drone here. Docking with even a careful, experienced symbiont for the first time could be painful; it was little wonder that the mechling was reluctant to permit the drone to do *that* to his other slots, as well.

"This one," Ravage said, nudging lightly at one of the untouched slots, beside the one the drone had savaged. "You must permit the other time to repair." The dock responded to the fine touch of Ravage's sensory whiskers, tiny internal components moving, shifting plates, trying to find something to grasp. Ravage let his sensory spines brush a little deeper, savoring that responsiveness. He'd be able to fold himself this tightly, but a little room for error would be helpful. _/Can you close the other, and use the space to widen this one a little more? Try the six-bar flexures sixteen, seventeen... and twenty, all at twelve-point-eight degrees./ _

_/Soundwave: acknowledges,/ _came the reply, focused and intent. Concentrating, Soundwave did as he was asked, filtering out the commands to individual docks, compacting the unneeded ones back down into their normal resting state. He triggered the tiny mechanisms in the one Ravage had chosen, spreading the plates even wider in the newly-opened space. Angling everything as the bladeframe had instructed felt a bit odd-he had always maneuvered the drone more or less directly into its slot during his practice. That manner of entry didn't seem possible with this configuration. A bit more analysis, and the only conclusion Soundwave could reach was that Ravage meant to … slide into place instead? To socket one connector at a time, instead of all at once?

Feeling his way around the new configuration, noting the positioning of claspers and receiving flexures, he did his best to flower open the waiting plates of the untouched dock in welcome. "Query: positioning now correct, Memory-keeper?"

Ravage cycled a slow vent, withdrawing just a little to watch the subtle modifications unfold - first the ones that Ravage had suggested, then a sheaf of others, bracing, echoing, buttressing. It wasn't exactly a suitable configuration for an inexperienced symbiont, or for a quick docking. But for a very flexible bladeframe with plenty of time... it was an elegant, creative solution. There... there would be opportunities to teach the simpler forms, later. "Almost," he said, looking up. "Now engage primary grav units, two-thirds power; primary magnetic rails one-quarter. Your goal is to lift, and provide a guidance net only. I will do the rest." This might be easier if Soundwave were on his back; if the mechling had trouble, Ravage would try that next.

Soundwave had no trouble. The rim of the port warmed, a cycling current filling the small antigrav nodes there. The magnetic field snapped into place - a grid to provide clear positioning data, once Ravage's optics and most other sensors were folded away.

The bladeframe paused for a long moment, just tasting those fields. It had been... more than fifty orn since he'd done this, since he'd had this. He'd... have to be careful. _/Hold still for me,/ _Ravage murmured. And then he let the antigrav catch him, and transformed under the carrier's waiting optics.

The blades of him hissed as they folded in, packing together impossibly tight, limbs grooving close to his chassis. Like a shifting river of knives, edges folding under, Ravage flowed up... and into the hollow of Soundwave's chest, following carefully along those electromagnetic fields. Sharp though his form could be, Ravage was careful not to so much as nick the young carrier's delicate internal mechanisms as he carefully poured himself into the cradle of the mechling's dock.

The feel of a warm, *living* symbiont … was nothing like a drone, Soundwave realized. In this form Ravage fit into his frame perfectly, as if made for him-no, as if they were made for each other, which was nothing more than the truth. He could feel the tiny adjustments the symbiont was making, even now, settling down into the waiting clasp of the dock, fitting down as the docking plates enfolded him out of reflex, catching and holding that silver and ebony-armored spark.

_/How does that feel?/ _Ravage asked, his sending as clear as a mirrored crystal. _/Is there any pain?/_ Soundwave couldn't help but marvel at it; the strange feel of data-glyphs coming from within his own frame, from a person now a part of him. Even unbonded, the sensation was unique and extraordinary, and he couldn't help but wonder what a more direct connection would feel like.

_/Negative, Memory-keeper,/_ Soundwave finally said in reply, doing his best to keep his glyphs sober and respectful. Despite his best efforts, ebullient wonder kept bubbling up around the edges, as if he were a sparkling again. It didn't hurt! He'd almost begun to think it always would, despite Recast's assurances.

Just to be sure, he double-checked the fit, making sure that none of the claspers or plates were cinched too tight or scraping against armor. _ /Query: your status? Ravage, uncomfortable?/_

Ravage's amusement was a low, rumbling growl. _/Entirely comfortable. If I am ever otherwise, I will inform you./ _ The bladeframe settled himself more fully into the support of the dock, carefully, delicately, locking himself into the intricately petaled internal plates. He'd... been right. It did feel different. The few degrees of tilt made the slot feel more secure than usual, and the young carrier's spark... oh. It seemed to pulse against him, a slow throb he could feel through his whole frame, deeply peaceful, satisfying, soothing. _/Close your armor?/_

The interleaving plates slid closed, confining the symbiont's electromagnetic field, shaping and reflecting it. Soundwave had been told that this should feel like... like holding a dense ball of warmth between the palms. But Ravage's field seemed instead to fill his chest with a silver glow, a resonating heat, backstruts to chestplate.

_/I am going to begin linking my systems with yours, now,/_ Ravage sent, and paused. He could feel the carrier's port-nodes, frighteningly bare of the usual interfering baffles. He made a last few modifications, adjusting his clawed connectors for precisely the right fitting, delicately pressing the ring-seals around the small, tight-closed apertures. The tightness, the tenseness, of Soundwave's ports gave him pause. Primus. It had been... a long, long time since he'd opened untouched sockets. _/Each link may pain you - very briefly, and only the first time. If you feel more than that, tell me. There are other techniques we can try./_

_/Affirmative./ _ Soundwave's answer was simple, but utterly open, the glyphs surrounding the affirmation with complete trust.

Ravage reached out, extending himself carefully. The waiting sockets were a familiar, aching call-even sensor-blinded, he would know where they were-and carefully, one at a time, he sank connectors home. The ports flowered open at his touch, calipers stretching as connections were made, cilia threading, cables interlinking, tiny threaded claws reaching out to clasp and tighten on his own.

Soundwave shivered, tremoring as he felt each connector latch, socketing into place. Ravage had not been entirely incorrect; there was the briefest electric spark of discomfort as each port opened, adjusted for its new occupant. But it was nothing against the sensations that followed, the thrum of Ravage's systems settling into sync with his own. He pressed talons against the sealed armor of his chassis in wonder. He could *feel* the swift-burning pulse of Ravage's spark next to his own. Feel the throb as the bladeframe's smaller frame became part of his, sharing the energon in his lines; feel the humming flow of metabolic data between Ravage's systems and his own. His carrier protocols automatically took over, checking systems, adjusting fluids and energy outputs as the bladeframe required, and Soundwave cycled a slow ventilation, luxuriating in the sensation.

This was what he had been made for. What he had been waiting to be, all the vorns of his life thus far-and now that he had it, he found it impossible to understand how other mecha lived without it. Instinctively, he reached out, opening the private link between carrier and symbiont for the first time. _ /-safe/protect/warm/happy/symbiosis-/_ Soundwave sent giddily, layering glyph on glyph in elaborate arabesques of delight, needing to share his joy.

A short pause, echoing... and then that delighted contact was returned, threaded through with its own ancient joy. _ /Fusion. Union. Communion... Yes./_

Soundwave's field enfolded Ravage's; he could feel his own field echoing from the very struts of the big carrier's chassis, surrounded, perfectly encompassed, as if he drifted in a cobalt sea. His systems exchanged freely, pouring out and flooding in, synchronous, closing this primal circuit. He could feel the mechling's repair and maintenance structures beginning to service his own with thorough care, renewing him more than his own small filters and capacitors could ever manage. That act alone was a deep narcotic.

A few breem passed, as every array fell into optimal concordance. Then Ravage felt the very spin of his spark hitch, skip... and drift into slow, regular harmony with Soundwave's. It should have, perhaps, alarmed him. Such totality of union was rare, even with a bonded carrier. But caught in this undertow of peace, it was just one more connection, one more accord. He could hardly keep himself from it - Soundwave's spark was already so close, so unshielded. _/I.../_ It was a struggle to stir enough to use his comm, moreso to remember where he left off and the carrier began. _/If you do not wish me to recharge here, now.../_ the glyphs were unconsciously laced, just at the edges, with ancient modifiers of respect, submission.

Chagrin filtered through Soundwave's delight as he received Ravage's gentle reminder. Truthfully, he *did* want Ravage to remain, to recharge and sleep safely within him. But that was not his decision to make, and the symbiont had already been beyond generous as it was in his teaching. Unable to hide his reluctance completely, he nonetheless triggered the command to unseal the armor over his chassis, plates unfolding, opening outward until Ravage's transformed form was exposed to the world once more.

A bonded carrier might have commanded his symbiont either to eject or to remain, as he judged was best. Soundwave had no such authority. Instead he simply unfurled his field, activating the guidance rails and antigravs, but otherwise allowing the bladeframe to choose how and when to disengage.

It took Ravage a few kliks to rouse enough to release his connectors from the young carrier's sockets - one at a time, with great care, not spilling a drop. Then another klik to unfold his plating from the dock's warm cradle. Leaving the heady resonance of Soundwave's pulsing spark was harder still. But at last, Ravage surrendered his transformed shape to the antigrav field, drawing himself out by the magnetic guidance Soundwave provided.

He transformed almost as soon as he was free of that warm embrace, dropping down to land on the berth top, scattering the broken drone bits that still littered its surface. Ravage shook himself, flaring all the blades of his plating, flattening them against his frame once more. He felt... better than he had in a long time, wholly renewed.

Ravage looked up, studying Soundwave for a few moments - this bare newspark, this innocent mechling carrier... whose spark tasted of silverdust and lapis and whose body was solace. And if the bladeframe's optics were a little stunned, a little wild, well … he doubted there was a symbiont in existence that would blame him.

Ravage leaped with easy strength to the irising, clear-plated window port. He turned, claws gouging into the rough-cut stone ledge. "I will return next cycle, before your usual recharge time," he said, distantly pleased that he was able to keep his vocalizer steady. "There are other forms you would do well to learn, as well." It was tempting beyond belief to remain-to luxuriate in the warmth of that field, the heady consolation of a carrier's presence, even an unbonded one. But … this mechling wasn't his. Wasn't anyone's-he cut off that that particular thread before it could progress any further.

No. He was acting as a teacher, a mentor. Nothing more, and it served no useful purpose to pretend otherwise. Decision made, Ravage turned and departed, leaving the young carrier alone with the fragments of his drone.

.

.


	3. Chapter 3

For the next twenty three orn, Ravage came to the mechling at the close of each cycle.

They started with the easiest of the forms, the simplest techniques, with an actively participating symbiont, already transformed and nearby. Soundwave mastered those quickly, and Ravage began adding complications - a poorly angled symbiont, one a little further away, one moving or jumping during transformation, one too injured to assist with the docking.

They practiced with different slots, and cross angles - Soundwave lying on his side, Ravage transformed beside him, while the mechling did his best to lift and slide the symbiont into his uppermost dock by the manipulation of fields alone. Ravage showed the mechling the means of easing a symbiont through the cassette transformation, when the symbiont was too weak to do so himself - that took long joors, Soundwave's field brushing and fumbling over the bladeframe's to find and manipulate those trigger points.

After a few orn, they practiced with the dock which the drone had savaged, as well. With careful attention, Ravage worked the stiffness from those scarred ports, and nudged plates and tiny components back into alignment. More importantly, he worked to drive all memory of pain from the mechling's conscious processing, until Soundwave's fields no longer flinched subtly at the feel of a symbiont's touch there.

And they practiced with a symbiont at long distances, starting from across the room and progressing to nearly the length of the hallway. That was particularly difficult, and tiring - once, pushed to exhaustion, Soundwave fumbled and dropped his burden, the cassette clattering several mechanometers to the floor. That error won him an abrupt end to the cycle's teaching - and a set of three claw scrapes across his forearm, evidence of the bladeframe's irritation and the first real damage his armor had ever taken. But the next cycle, Ravage was back, and this time he didn't pad quite so far away during their long-distance practice.

Soundwave learned the oldest forms, the ways to whisper greeting and welcome with the gentle radiance of a faintly-glowing field, even through closed armor. The way a carrier could warm his field to offer subtle comfort to all symbionts within range; the ways to move to avoid startling the frightened. Ravage even practiced with the mechling the means of docking an unwilling symbiont, one too confused or damaged to recognize his carrier's embrace. Such a measure could not keep confined a truly determined symbiont, but it gave a carrier an option where he might otherwise have none. The technique had saved symbionts before. And so Ravage taught it to this newspark, in the hope it might save them again.

Every cycle, Ravage departed after his lessons. But sometimes, just sometimes... the berthtop beside Soundwave was warm when he woke from recharge, or the window just irising closed.

Recast never commented upon the time his creation and his guest spent together, never expressed either approval or concern. It was almost impossible that he didn't know; subtle Ravage might be, but Soundwave was not in the habit of concealing things from his creator's observant optics. Possibly the creator-mech was experienced enough to know that the fiercely independent bladeframe would have disdained both encouragement and disapproval. What Ravage taught Soundwave was between them, and no other, and interference of any sort would not have been tolerated.

So instead Recast tinkered, and watched … and over time, guests began arriving at his estate. Carrier mecha with their cohorts, typically highly ranked and respected, came to visit with the creator-mech, to pay their respects or request minor repairs and modifications. Their symbionts often had a wide range of foci, their interests expansive, and their interactions and loyalty were, for the most part, mutually supportive. The carriers were intelligent, active and experienced in the protection and care of their cohorts. All were unfailingly courteous, both to Recast's creations and his guest. No unwanted attentions were pressed, no official overtures of courtship made. Still, the implications of this sudden influx of visitors was hard to miss. None of the visiting carrier-mecha had a full cohort of symbionts; all had room to support and protect a new addition, should interest ever be expressed.

Ravage understood the rationale behind Recast's sudden sociability. A symbiont without a carrier was a symbiont that gradually became more erratic, who weakened bit by bit as its systems decayed, deprived of the additional support and repair functions provided by a host. Ravage had been framed hardier than most; created in an earlier age, when symbionts had to be more resilient, able to withstand longer periods without a carrier mech. But choosing a new carrier was inevitable, and in his own gentle way, Recast was doing his best to remind his guest of that fact.

He knew all of this; and yet couldn't prevent himself from bristling instinctively at these new intruders to his domain. Bladeframes were notoriously territorial, even by symbiont standards. He had been at Recast's estate less than a quarter-vorn, but that had been enough to claim the little sanctuary as his own, Recast's attentions as his own. And … a certain mechling as his own, which was a disturbing revelation once he came to it. Not as a carrier, of course, but-his. His property, shiny and new and naively eager to learn. And he did not want to share.

The state of affairs left the bladeframe increasingly irate, and even less willing to give the new carriers the attention they deserved - even when the visitors began arriving with cohorts whose members Ravage knew and liked. Ravage even declined to come down from the rooftop the day Diffraction arrived.

Perhaps the highest-ranking carrier remaining in the quadrant, Diffraction came ostensibly for repairs to himself and one of his symbionts, but with his position, he could have had even finer work done back on Cybertron. And his cohort was painted in the old way, with the subtle nanite whorls and fractals of courtship. Ravage watched from above for a time, then padded off to his favorite cornice, determined to ignore the newcomers for as long as possible.

Which, given Diffraction's eldest symbiont, wasn't particularly long. In just a few breem, talons touched down on the drain beside Ravage, thick atmosphere washing over him as the symbiont backwinged. He growled a little as the flightframe clatter-hopped closer to him, across the tiles.

"It has been many vorn, Ravage," said Laserbeak. A specialist in the arts and music, the flightframe had been created during Cybertron's first Golden Age, and his breadth of knowledge and experience of all of the following eras, especially the third, was extraordinary. The flightframe was an ancient by almost any measure, save only when compared with a handful of others - among them, Ravage himself.

"Hn," said Ravage, entirely aware that he'd not be let off so easily.

Laserbeak proceeded closer, talons scritching on the rooftop. "You've become, I must say, even more broody. 'Tis a feat I'd not imagined attainable." The flightframe's tone was light, a familiar and inquisitive teasing. He hopped to where Ravage could see him if the bladeframe bothered to unshutter his optics, and spread his flight plates in the weak light of the double suns, angling them for finest display. The light caught and glittered from the complexities of the mathematical sets he wore, the nova and cantor and phoenix recursions. The faintly glowing nanites were short-lived, and did not replicate - but for their brief period of functioning, they could make a mech seem bathed in living light. Laserbeak held the exceedingly vain pose for a moment, then with a soft chirr of humor, folded his wings and stretched out on his belly to enjoy the suns and warm rooftop as well. "We're returning to the Iacon sciences academy next orn. Come with us?"

"Did you promise Diffusion that you would ask?" Ravage snorted.

"Absolutely. And now I have," said Laserbeak, stretching his beak in a luxurious, joint-cracking yawn. He lay quietly for several breem, sunning himself, before a movement below caught his attention. The flightframe raised his head on supple neck, watching a tall mechling carrier cross the walkway below. "In all seriousness. What keeps you here?" Laserbeak asked, turning his faceted optics to regard the bladeframe.

And caught Ravage's slitted gaze, focused on that same mechling's retreating frame.

Laserbeak cycled his optics, lifting his head in surprise. "That one?" His keen gaze focused in on the carrier, noting the folded sensory panels-almost like wings, in a way-the large silver and cobalt frame, the hint of uncertainty in the way the mechling moved that bespoke his youth. A bit unusual in appearance, perhaps, but nothing extraordinary.

He glanced back at the bladeframe. "A newspark? Ravage ..."

Ravage growled, shuttering his optics, armor bristling. "No."

Laserbeak tilted his head, regarding the other symbiont sidelong. "So he's not tried to court you?" A symbiont of Ravage's rank would be quite the catch, *especially* for a new carrier trying to establish a cohort.

Ravage opened one optic, favoring the flightframe with a glare. "I'm teaching him. As a courtesy to Recast, to repay him for his care. That is all."

"Are you now?" Laserbeak didn't bother to hide his amusement, turning his long neck to watch the object of Ravage's interest. "Odd. I've never known you to be particularly patient with younglings of any kind. Much less volunteer to play pedagogue to one." He slanted the bladeframe an assessing glance. "Well, by my estimation, you'll be rid of him soon enough. Perhaps then you'll consider coming to Iacon?"

Both optics snapped open. "What?"

Laserbeak sat up, extending one wing and looking over the long flightplates, as if inspecting the elaborate designs painted there for flaws. "Well, your mechling is obviously fully-framed. I'm sure Recast is already preparing his presentation; most carriers and symbionts here on Xyr strike out fairly early, at least by Iaconian standards." He nibbled at a nonexistent bit of grime at the first wing-joint. "Knowing Recast, I'm sure his mechling is more than ready to begin the search for a cohort. To go out, make a name for himself among the stars, form his first bonds…"

Ravage bared teeth in a subtle snarl. But, with determination, he tucked his taloned paws under, half-shuttered his optics, twisting his backstruts to press a new section of his plating into the warm rooftop tiles. "No doubt he will."

Laserbeak clicked quietly. He and Ravage had never been part of the same cohort, but they'd fought together as closely as any bonded, had shared memories for half an orn at a time, linked with their own small cables. Being able to use their carrier's far greater data relays for that transfer, instead, would be... an experience to be treasured. Laserbeak settled back down, and this time he spread both wings out across the tiles, the painted fractals glowing, ever-shifting. With all due caution and respect, he snaked his neck around, found a rough spot between Ravage's armored plates, along the length of his spine, and began to groom there with delicately probing nips.

He could taste the bladeframe's tension, could feel it. Laserbeak cycled a quiet vent. "Ravage. There are twenty-nine symbionts on Xyr that are unbonded at present. Including Stringtheory, Tektite, and Entanglement. " It was a strikingly large figure. Not all of those twenty-nine were seeking carriers immediately, not all would even consider a newspark... but even still, the available pool was a wide one. The three that Laserbeak named were solidly middle-ranked, several megavorn old. "They're good symbionts, of fine temperament, deeply knowledgeable and willing to teach. Any one of them would be a prize beyond a mechling's wildest hopes. Let us speak with them."

Ravage's tail lashed once. "Entanglement is a pedant and a bore."

Laserbeak paused in his efforts, regarding the tense bladeframe. "Then we shall not encourage him," he replied mildly. He had never seen Ravage so invested in a mechling's prospects before; one might think he'd had a hand in the young carrier's creation!

"...very well," Ravage finally said, armor settling along his spine. At least this would give him an opportunity to review the other symbionts available for bonding on Xyr, and perhaps warn off the ones he knew to be unsuitable. The mechling had taken to Ravage's tutelage well; despite his distaste for the idea of a brash, scrabbling newsparked symbiont laying claim to this carrier's untouched docks, there was little reason to be concerned for Soundwave's welfare. Not anymore.

"Good. I can speak with Diffraction as well, if you wish. I know he holds Recast in high esteem; he might be able to help show the mechling a few things, so that the new carrier might present himself in the best possible light." Leaving off his grooming, Laserbeak carefully draped his head over one of the flattened armor plates of Ravage's back. "Obligations aside; it would be pleasant to see you more than once every few vorns," he said wistfully. "If not Diffraction, perhaps some other Iaconian carrier?"

"Hn," said Ravage, but made no move to dislodge the flightframe's slight weight. "Perhaps." The Towers of Iacon were physically safe places, at least. Even a young mech without battle experience might function safely there. But, on the other hand, a young and naive mech - even a very intelligent one - might easily fall prey to political games that could be every bit as deadly. Ravage was not certain which he'd rather risk with a newsparked carrier... and still less certain why he even bothered running that thread of calculation.

No. Laserbeak was wise. They'd visit the available symbionts, make certain all of them gave Soundwave the consideration he was properly due. Soundwave would have a strong cohort, become overnight a well-respected carrier of considerable rank. He would learn, and grow in skill ... and then, one day, he would wear the fractals for Ravage.

The bladeframe laid his head between his forepaws. "You should probably know," he said, "I am already beholden."

Laserbeak looked up, his optics wide. Surely Ravage hadn't...

"To a hatchling."

Laserbeak made a choking sound, reset his vocalizer, tried to speak again. "W - what?"

"Mm," said Ravage, venting and stretching out a little more, to enjoy the suns. "I vowed the transmission of one observation file, when he comes into his full frame. The Nexion Rock Lord battle, I believe. Think Diffusion would still take me?"

That wrung a chirring laugh from Laserbeak. Such a future promise might require Diffusion to return here in a dozen vorn, or to arrange for the mechling to be transported to him. That accompanying burden would render many symbionts much less desirable. But then, this was Ravage. "Hmm. Let me think of a carrier who'd refuse you, even if you turned your chromatophores white and bid the cohort call you Prima. Oh, that's right, that chronicler does not exist." Laserbeak fixed the bladeframe with a mock-warning glare. "Not that I would advise you to try it in any case, Ravage."

Ravage flicked his audials forward. "Prima, to you."

Thoroughly amused, Laserbeak laid his head back down for another breem or two. Then: "I didn't know you fought at Nexion. Trade you for every concert Tidepull performed at Vos."

"Hnh," Ravage said doubtfully, though he was already sliding his port covers back, lazily letting Lazerbeak handle the physical connections. The flightframe's beak was far more dexterous than his talons. "Only if you include Redwhisper's Primon saga. The Towers performance."

"Highway robbery! But agreed," Laserbeak chirred, carefully plucking the bladeframe's hardline connector free, spooling it out to slip into one of his sockets. Then he eased his own into Ravage's port, probing delicately until the connection clicked, and laid back down.

Ravage's ebony armor collected even more radiation heat than the rooftop - and was at least as comfortable. Laserbeak arranged himself a bit more, enjoying the sensation as queued up his own memories and slipped into the experience of Nexion, so that he might know it as Ravage had. All memories were precious, of course. But sometimes the warmth and companionship of the moment was to be indulged in as well ….

.

.

.

In the end, Laserbeak was proven right. Preparations for Recast's official presentation of his creation soon became evident. Notices were sent to all unbonded symbionts, inviting their attendance so that they might be courted. As a matter of course, invitations were also extended to most of the chronicler-cohorts, carrier and symbiont alike, currently in residence on Xyr, in order that they might stand witness to the newest chronicler in their midst. Still, the duties of a chronicler being what they were, it was rare for more than a few to be able to attend a presentation.

It soon became apparent, however, that this particular event would prove the exception rather than the rule.

Much of the blame for this could be laid at Ravage and Laserbeak's pedes. Their efforts among the unbonded symbionts in the chronicler community had not gone unnoticed. Most especially once Ravage made a point of warning a few-well, perhaps more than a few-particularly brash or otherwise unsuitable symbionts to take no liberties with this particular mechling. For a symbiont of Ravage's rank to have such a vested interest in any kind of youngling was almost unheard of, and established cohorts, both carrier and symbiont alike, found themselves intensely curious as to what manner of creation could achieve such a feat.

As a result, it soon became apparent that the presentation of this particular mechling would be *very* well attended. The preparations continued apace. Soundwave, who had no particular reason to venture far from his creator's estate, was sheltered from most of the gossip, while Recast pretended to be cheerfully oblivious to the rising tide of speculation, even as he reveled in the interest.

Time passed-and ten orns later, as the star that was Cybertron rose to the north, above the shining expanse of Xyr's Starhall, Recast presented his newest creation, adult-framed and ready to take up his mantle as Chronicler: Soundwave.

It had been a long time, Ravage thought, since he had seen so many chroniclers in one place. Even in Iacon, with its Science Academy, its vast archives and libraries, seeing so many cohorts assembled together would have been worthy of careful chronicling. Here, they seemed to fill the vast space of the Starhall, old companions and rivals meeting, assessing, exchanging words and data alike. A mech could easily be overlooked in such an assemblage. And yet …

And yet Soundwave did not. Standing tall beneath the shining vaults of the Starhall, he held court with quiet dignity and few words. His armor gleamed, unadorned as befitted a newspark, flawlessly pristine and unscarred. Sensory panels were mantled above him in full extravagant display, gleaming cobalt and silver under the reflected light of the starscape above, and the only adornments he wore were the intricately knotted symbols of a chronicler-carrier: twisted wire braided and placed upon the points of shoulder armor and chassis, on gauntlets and panel-edges. They shone, swaying elegantly with each movement: gold and silver and copper entwined for communication, for the electric-spark of thought and memory shared. Platinum and iridium, entwined with alloyed steel, for strength and resilience. And intertwined with them all-cybertronium, its singular iridescence reflecting all the colors of a mech's spark-the symbol of Cybertron and Primus Himself.

Ravage prowled past a carved-stone panel, a hundred mechanometers long or more, depicting ancient primes and their rites. At every juncture, a carved symbiont curled between the great slabs - flightframed or foxframed, small as a razor snake or as large as a hornframe - observers, one and all, subtle watchers. Like them, Ravage kept to the shadows, and went unnoticed more often than not.

The bladeframe paused briefly to observe the creator-mecha. With Recast's official duties done, all three had claimed a large, open alcove lined with wide, soft-topped sitting platforms. They'd also collected about a dozen cubes of Recast's excellent highgrade. The trio seemed to be playing a game of Feint. The hugely complex, deep-dimensional test of strategy was normally meant for two, but all three mecha were apparently playing, reaching out in turn to move their gambits across the hardlight board hanging midair, while simultaneously discussing some arcane innovation in boron compressors. Hatchlings tumbled over their pedes, poked tiny talons at the optics of other hatchlings, tried to climb into the highgrade, and generally conducted themselves like the newsparks they were. Crosswise and Motif were somewhere among that horde - after a moment's search, Ravage spotted them. Along with two other symbiont hatchlings, they were defending a fortress they'd constructed of several empty cubes. Crosswise, it seemed, was determined to start his cohort early.

Several symbionts perched or lounged nearby, watching avidly; not a few chroniclers chose to bear witness to the creator class, though it seemed to Ravage a narrow discipline.

By now, most presentation ceremonies began to thin - it was rare that a carrier or his cohort could devote nearly an entire orn to any mechling's first bonding ceremony. Symbionts who determined that their interests lay elsewhere, carriers with too much to do, all normally trickled away over the course of the event, leaving only a handful of witnesses... and with luck, a handful of symbionts.

Almost no one was leaving Soundwave's ceremony.

Mecha swirled in slow patterns around the Starhall's vast spaces, bathed in the fractals of courtship or crusted over with tiny affixed stones that glittered. Some carriers and even symbionts had electroplated themselves in thin layers of brilliant metals, others wore great plates of embossing over their normal armor, still others were draped with fantastically complex jeweled netting. Some mecha simply glowed with enhanced chromatophores. The stir of the crowd was, for Ravage, an assault on the senses; so much movement made him tense.

Ravage found it difficult to take some of these mecha seriously, anyway. The jewel-encrusted ones in particular reminded Ravage of the carrier hatchling, Crosswise, and his crystals.

Soundwave's clean cobalt and silver lines were a refuge amongst all that chaos and attention, and Ravage found his optics always returning to that tall figure, standing a head above any other carrier present, sensor panels mantled even higher. Soundwave was difficult to spot for all that, always in the thick of the crowd, no matter where he stood. And now, Ravage was having trouble finding him, which left the bladeframe still more uneasy.

Padding silently past a stack of energon cubes, from which other creators' mechlings dispensed highgrade freely, Ravage found the tall carrier at last. Soundwave had seated himself on a platform beside Striker, a small, dark flightframe whom Ravage disfavored.

"...and it turned out, the Tr!klcctch were everywhere, they'd already burrowed under the entire compound. I knew I had to do something," Striker was saying, obviously relishing the attention. He honed the edge of his beak against the side of a nearby cube.

Soundwave had been listening to the flightframe's tale with every sign of respectful interest, giving it the sober attention it deserved. Ravage's arrival, however, did not go unnoticed. Optics widened in surprise, and Soundwave dipped his head in a respectful nod, his field warming subtly with pleasure. "Memory-keeper Ravage," he said, greeting the new arrival. "Memory-keeper Striker: relating his experiences on the moons of Tigrin during the war." He did not inquire as to whether the two of them knew each other; symbionts were social creatures, and on Xyr, at least, it was assumed that all chroniclers knew each other, by reputation if nothing else.

"Indeed?" Slightly irritated, Ravage padded forward and sat, curling tail around forefeet. He'd heard that tale before; and while no symbiont would actually lie, Striker had a tendency to tell his stories in such a way as to embellish his own importance in them. Forgivable, perhaps, especially during a courtship. Still, Ravage gave the other symbiont a narrowed crimson stare just on general principle. "Interesting coincidence. I was also at Tigrin."

Striker shifted uncomfortably, wings tucking in a bit tighter under that disapproving regard. "Well, er … how wonderful. Then you know of what I speak. It was quite the battle-ah, not that I actually *fought* in it, but I saw it. And I, well-I did warn the nearest warframe as well. Flew right over their heads, and they never laid a sensor on me. Told a little yellow infiltrator mech what was going on, first one I found, and next thing I know, not only does the rest of the company know, but he somehow managed to crosswire the defenses and electrified all the floors. Not enough to hurt a mech, but it gave that Tr!klcctch advance team something to think about, that's for sure!"

Soundwave was not so gauche as to remark on the sudden change in Striker's story, but amusement hovered at the edges of his field, the fine plates at the corners of his mouthparts folding upward ever so slightly. "Query: name of infiltrator responsible for that defeat?"

Striker hesitated, suddenly embarrassed. "Er, well-I didn't have the time to get his designation …"

"Bumblebee. The mech's name was Bumblebee, Special Operations infiltrator. A second-rank dux, created by Slapshot," Ravage said with an irritated huff. Striker had always been sloppy about the details; an unforgiveable sin as far as the bladeframe was concerned.

"Oh. Uhm." Striker watched the tip of Ravage's tail twitch, an idle swing of heavy sensor barbs, presently folded. "Thank you, Ravage," he said, and then flinched a little - the bare name sounded too familiar in the polite venue, and too familiar given the mech he addressed. That made him bristle. What made Ravage so very different from Striker himself? They were both symbionts. And no symbiont could know everything. The flightframe dipped his head into his small cube of highgrade, taking a gulp of courage. "So. I don't suppose you know the coding he used to accomplish this feat?" he said, optics spiraled down.

Ravage studied him for a moment, then shrugged a little, turning his head to inspect a plate of his armor. "Third Kavadion security crack, designation one-point-zero-zero-twelve. Taught primarily in Typecast's surveillance skill suite; most Tigrin installations are now secured against that particular exploit." Ravage flared his plating to examine the razored edge a little more closely. Hn. Was that a chip?

"That's - uh," said Striker. "Well. I... believe I am needed elsewhere. If you'll excuse me. Soundwave, it has been a pleasure. I trust you'll consider what I can bring to your cohort." The statement rang oddly even to him - it was rare for a fairly strong symbiont to be refused, particularly by a newspark. But then, no one seemed to be treating this newspark as if he was ordinary... Hurriedly, Striker launched himself off his seating pedestal, nearly toppling it.

Ravage glanced to the mechling, then down to his own forepaws at the amused spread of Soundwave's faceplates. He should, perhaps, not have been quite so harsh on the young symbiont. Nor should he have... shown off quite as much. Still, Striker was an aft. "Soundwave. Have you been meeting likely prospects?"

Soundwave gave him a nod. "Affirmative. Many suitable symbionts present; several under consideration. Stringtheory and Raindance, especially; their foci, fascinating. Conversations thus far, quite enjoyable."

Stringtheory was a safe enough choice, Ravage had to admit. Well-versed in the hard sciences, including the more speculative branches of physics and chemistry, he was well-regarded and much in demand by the leading scientific minds of the empire. A bit … staid, perhaps, in anything that didn't involve quantum theory and space-time manipulation, but a symbiont was not required to be entertaining, merely intelligent. His foci were certainly ones that were unlikely to put a young carrier in danger, barring any forays into weapons design.

Raindance, however … Raindance was a concern. The symbiont was both personable and talented, still young but rapidly rising in rank. On the surface, an ideal candidate for a new carrier, with the potential to be a challenging and inquisitive partner. Raindance's foci, however, was warfare; the closer he was to the front lines, the happier he was, witnessing battles and capturing vivid images of both the horror and the glory of war. Paired up with a young, unarmed carrier, particularly one with Soundwave's unique vulnerabilities ….

Unconsciously, Ravage dug his talons into the finely cut volcanic stone flooring slabs - stopped, when he realized he was leaving scrapes. Raindance was also a seekerframe. Though no true relation to the airlords of Vos, seekerframes were built lightly, for jet propulsion. They sometimes carried a modicum of projectile armament - which was of little help against an immediate or close-range threat to their carrier. And they required a great deal of fuel, which meant that the carrier had to stay relatively close - within a few thousand filum, at least. In harm's way.

"You should consider whether they will work well together, in complement," Ravage blurted. "Stringtheory is a dedicated academic, and is not framed for the trials of war." Just like Soundwave, in point of fact. "He would probably not enjoy a border placement, while Raindance would like nothing but." Ravage paused, smoothed all his plating flat against his frame with an effort of will. His talons were drawing gouges in the stone, again. "What did you think of Tektite?" A rare hornframe, Tektite was versed in materials science. Such a mech would always be most useful behind the front lines, back where the manufacturing and industrial activity took place. He was also the largest and most armored type of symbiont - normally placid, but powerful if crossed. A hornframe would make a strong defender for a young carrier.

Soundwave hesitated-and Ravage belatedly realized that his efforts to persuade the young carrier to a safer choice could easily be seen an interfering with the establishment of a new cohort. Even given Ravage's rank, a carrier still held an immutable authority simply by virtue of their position, and few looked kindly upon an interloper, whether symbiont or another carrier, attempting to suborn that authority. Imparting information was one thing; discouraging a young carrier's independence by second-guessing their decisions, quite another.

"Tektite, quite admirable," Soundwave finally said, with the air of a mech who was choosing his words carefully. "Experience, extensive; personality, very amiable. But …" For the first time he looked slightly uncertain, glancing down at the silvered tips of his talons. "Our conversations, lacking in commonality. Soundwave, Tektite: have few intersecting interests, our bonding, likely to provide little mutual benefit."

Ravage cycled a quiet vent, turning his optics away for a moment. "An interest in warfare does not mean you need be on the front lines," he said, more tactfully. Disparaging another symbiont, however indirectly - before a courting carrier! - was nothing less than poor form, and Ravage knew better. And yet, if this carrier was thrown into the fray his very first vorn and failed to survive, as so many newspark carriers had failed before...

"Aside from foci, are you considering frametype?" Ravage asked carefully, trying for more a more subtle approach. Perhaps he could extol the virtues of the heavily-armed.

Mindful of the watching optics of other carriers, Soundwave's careful dignity never faltered. But this close, Ravage could feel the slight buzz of embarrassment threading through the young carrier's field, the slight shift of silver armor causing knotted wire adornments to sway and glint in the light.

"Soundwave: finds many frametypes pleasing," he finally replied. "Flightframes and serpentframes, however, most of all. Their grace and speed, a pleasure to watch." Bladeframes were not included on that list, Ravage could not help but note, despite fitting that same criteria; though it was impossible to tell whether that was due to the rarity of the frametype, or simply because Soundwave did not wish to say anything that might be interpreted as an overture of courtship. "Symbiont selection based on appearance, however, understood to be inappropriate," the young carrier added hastily. "Aesthetics not primary consideration for future cohort."

Ravage arched an optical ridge. "There is more to it than aesthetics. Frametype determines the range of possible armor and armament, and often influences temperament as well." Grace and speed played into battle abilities too, of course - flightframes were a prime example, though their natural combativeness assuredly played a role. They were not a particularly strong frame, but they were both accurate and fast. Two or three of them could jointly demolish a foe many times their size and apparent power. There were three flightframes available here... but one was Striker and the other two were newsparks. Ravage growled a little. Garboil was presently unbonded, but he was back on Cybertron... and perhaps had learned a little too much cruelty to make a good first bonding for Soundwave. Firsts were important; they often set the tenor for the rest of the cohort.

Serpentframes, like Stringtheory, were superb at infiltration and assassinations or ambush combat, but their small and specialized builds could carry no real weaponry beyond venom and plasma edges to their armor plates. Which was all well and good if Soundwave's foe was, say, in recharge - not so much if he was a warframe bent on wreaking havoc.

Ravage cycled a quiet vent. Few single symbionts were both short and long-range fighters, equally politically apt and battle-ready, as rugged as they were swift. A bladeframe would be nearly perfect - though admittedly, Ravage's estimation of his own frametype was less than dispassionate, for several reasons. But a bladeframe would keep the mechling safe, at least. Even if... "what did you think of Starsteel?" Ravage asked, neutrally. The only other unbonded bladeframe here, Starsteel wasn't quite as knowledgeable as Stringtheory, but was just as politically capable, and far more potent in battle.

"Starsteel … well-ranked, with intriguing foci," Soundwave admitted, after a slow, considering pause. His field rippled uncertainly, embarrassment deepening, mixing oddly with determination. "His knowledge of xenobiology, both extensive and fascinating. His experience with interstellar sociology and diplomacy, useful. But …"

Ravage, through an effort of will, managed not to bristle at the glowing description of the other bladeframe. "But-?"

Soundwave straightened a little, squaring his frame and stilling the tiny, nervous movements of his talons. He regarded Ravage levelly, with a fragile kind of dignity. "Bladeframes capable, graceful and deadly. Also … very territorial."

"A common misconception," said Ravage, pleased to be able to dispel a myth. Focusing on imparting information helped ease his instinctive defensive response, too. Honestly, the pre-bonding files they were giving mechlings these days... It made sense that Soundwave would be concerned - framed for a large cohort, he might be reluctant to take on a symbiont who eschewed companions. "Bladeframes actually tolerate most frametypes fairly well. Our so-notorious territoriality extends primarily to sharing a carrier with other bladefr..."

The plates around Soundwave's optics tightened, just a little. Ravage halted, cutting off his vocalizer. The mechling knew the symbiont specs - knew them perfectly well, would have looked up the data if the files he'd been given were incomplete. Soundwave was nothing if not thorough - Ravage had learned that, even in his few short orns with the mechling.

Which meant that Soundwave was selecting his first... with the intention of courting another bladeframe later.

The only other one he'd met was Ravage.

It... it was what Ravage had planned, hoped for, worked for. _And Soundwave knew it_ - how long had he known it? How long had it been, since Ravage had found himself outplayed? And yet the mechling meant to accommodate Ravage, in his own innocent, solemnly honorable way.

Ravage felt his armor clamp tight to his frame. The mechling - he was little more than a *hatchling* and - and yet those optics gleamed with a patient wisdom far beyond the mechling's vorns.

For the first time in a long, long span of eons, Ravage felt like a sparkling himself, caught on the cusp of desperately wanting something he was not, properly, to claim.

The bladeframe stood and turned, in a single fluid motion. And stalked away.

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Cowrite with HopeofDawn. Check archiveofourown(dot)org for the most up-to-date posting.


	4. Chapter 4

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Ravage continued to stay away, for the rest of the long ceremony. He could not bring himself to go far, keeping close to the shadows, cutting off any attempt at discourse with a long-fanged snarl. He found himself pacing, restless, conflicted, furious, his conflict turned into mindless motion around the edges of the hall. He avoided the mechling, most of all - while keeping Soundwave always in his sight.

After Ravage had departed, Soundwave had sat quietly for a long breem, the other eligible symbionts circling close. Then, quietly, he stood, and continued his duties - meeting, conversing, exchanging pleasantries as the orn wore on.

And the orn *did* wear on. Half-framed mechlings gathered up the somnolent hatchlings at last, letting them catch what recharge they could in the closely protective embrace of their elder siblings. Smaller symbionts sought out their carriers for docking. The highgrade flowed freely. And still Soundwave showed no sign of making his selection.

It was the symbionts, at long last, who took matters into their own talons. Twenty three of them - an unheard of number, almost every eligible symbiont on the planet - gathered in the center of the Skyhall's vast rotunda, Cybertron a distant glimmer among the cascade of stars overhead. Gradually, the surrounding carriers drew back, bonded symbionts with them, forming a ring of mecha around the center.

The carrier with whom Soundwave spoke touched his shoulder gently, smiled, backed away to join the others, leaving the mechling alone at last. Soundwave turned, glancing at the assemblage, the patiently waiting symbionts, scanning the vast hall. He turned to Recast, who gave his creation a small nod of acknowledgment.

Then he turned back to the waiting symbionts, standing dignified and tall, giving them the entirety of his focus. "Soundwave: is grateful for your patience, your consideration," he said, words pitched only to carry to the nearest ranks of mecha. A proper courtship demanded intimacy and honesty, not grand rhetoric. "Your efforts and your tutelage, appreciated."

He hesitated for a moment-only a sparkbeat, the briefest space of time-before making his choice clear. He turned to Raindance, the other symbionts making way as he advanced, and folded himself down upon his pedes, resting kneeplates upon the shining stone floor and opening his field, projecting warmth and welcome. With deliberate slowness, he unfurled the full array of his primary and secondary data-cables, uncoiling them to wreath outward and above him in a shining, segmented halo, a visible sign of his power and nascent ability.

The small seekerframe cycled a shuddering vent, drifting a little higher on his antigravs, every sensor attuned to that display, to the kneeling carrier. The warm flare of Soundwave's field was strikingly well-practiced, suffusing and nuanced yet flawless, better than some highly experienced carriers could manage at all, let alone one so young. He could feel it sway through every other unbonded symbiont nearby, an appreciative ripple. How had...?

_/Memory-keeper Raindance./ _Soundwave sent the final command, unsealing the armor over his chassis, the plating sliding back and outwards by careful degrees, baring the vulnerable components of his core, the empty and waiting docks. As those leaves of armor spread, vocalizers whirred faintly among the observers. The densely arching splay of datacables was impressive - and *ten* docks? _/Soundwave: would off-/ _

The seekerframe held himself still, delighting in every broadcast word.

There was a slight stir in the assembled crowd as Soundwave spoke, a ripple of surprise and consternation that bounced from field to field, accompanied by a rising hum of comm chatter. The closest rank of mecha parted, a low metallic snarl granted to one particularly slow carrier mech-and a silver and ebony bladed frame stalked out into the open space, sensory spines hackled upwards.

Symbionts scrambled from the big bladeframe's path, tumbling aside. Raindance had more to defend. The seekerframe pivoted sharply, flaring the violently brilliant blue of his underside, blocking Ravage's way and his view of the terribly vulnerable carrier. His carrier, almost - *Raindance's* carrier, in full and magnificent courting display. Ten - Primus! And that _warmth_... _/What do you think you're -!/_

Ravage's razored armor plates spread, every edge a weapon. The spines and blades of his tail slipped apart, folded back into a heavy energon flail, already heating, rimed with plasma. His side guns, like the external weapons of all other mecha, had been left outside this sacred ceremony - but he would not need them. He could claw the seekerframe from the air in a single twisting leap. Ravage's jaws spread a killer's assemblage of blades. _/MOVE./_

Soundwave stilled, the confident warmth of his field suddenly tinged with confusion, uncertainty … and underneath it, so subtle as to be almost undetectable, the faintest golden threads of hope. The crowd stirred again. Millennia of tradition and protocol held them in place, barely, as elder carriers shifted and exchanged tightly-channelled queries, symbionts flaring plating and edging possessively closer to their own carrier-mecha. For a symbiont, even one of such high rank, to interfere with an bond-offer-!

Outmatched, outranked, Raindance still snarled, his field flaring with sudden spike-edged fury at Ravage's presumption. This carrier, newsparked and yet still radiant with possibility, had been about to offer for *him*, to make him his First. How dare Ravage try to take that away! Wingplates flared, Raindance's grappling talons unfolded, ready to defend his claim-

-when a change in that open, exposed field behind him, a sudden sharp spike of regret and yearning, of hope, stopped him. He half-turned, looking back over one wing to Soundwave. The unbonded carrier was still kneeling, his chestplates still opened in offering … but his optics were on the approaching bladeframe, his field open and welcoming, an almost tangible lure. Almost desperately, he looked back to Ravage. Surely the bladeframe didn't mean to-?

But to Raindance's chagrin, it was clear that despite all custom and expectation, Ravage did.

Raindance gave way, grudgingly retreating. Despite the palpable threat of the elder symbiont's razored plating and lethal talons, he gave only just enough ground for the bladeframe to stand before Soundwave, to offer himself for consideration alongside all the others, and not a step more. Perhaps he had misunderstood, and there was still a chance-

-but one glimpse at the look they shared told him otherwise. Raindance might yet be part of Soundwave's cohort, if the carrier's almost-offer had been made out of true interest. But he would not be Soundwave's First.

Watching the bladeframe's approach, Soundwave felt the last vestiges of regret and disappointment vanish. He'd been certain he'd utterly offended Ravage earlier-that his faint, half-formed hopes and plans for a future bonding, once he had proven himself, had proved too presumptuous to express. The idea of a newsparked carrier laying claim to a symbiont as rare and precious as Ravage-it was beyond arrogant. It was unthinkable, illogical. The bladeframe's sudden furious retreat had been all the proof he needed of that.

Or so he'd thought.

But now Ravage was *here*, before him, that narrowed crimson gaze focused on the opened plates of his chassis, his wreathed halo of datacables, his wide optics. The bladeframe stood, head lifting proudly, tail lashing just once … waiting for Soundwave to offer his courtship and his bond.

He spared a brief moment for Raindance, sending the seekerframe a tightly-banded, private message, an intertwined glyph of _/promise/regret/future possibility/_. Then he turned back to Ravage, bowing his helm and turning his hands open and upward at his sides, talon-tips tremoring finely with uncertainty and desperate hope. _ /Memory-keeper Ravage. Soundwave: would offer you my protection, my energon and my service. Will you accept my bond?/ _

Slowly, Ravage bent his head, forelegs dipping in a ritual genuflection. _ /Templar Soundwave./ _The glyphs rang out around the gathered circle, firmly broadcast, nothing secretive or ambivalent about this act. High-ranking carriers, those who had hoped to court Ravage once his obsession had run its course, stirred. A few jerked as if to break the circle and move forward - others dragged them back, before they could forget themselves. The shocked background chatter faded, every mech on edge, waiting to see this completed. Not a sound disrupted the breaking-tense atmosphere.

The bladeframe lifted his head, stalked closer. _/My spark and my obedience, my senses and my memory, I offer to you./_ Each glyph fell into the quiet, like ripples in a clear pool. Ravage's tight-wound field unfolded itself, flared receptively, a ancient silver radiance every mech with even the most basic of EM sensors could sense. It felt like Cybertron itself. Vocalizers crack;ed as carriers around the circle felt that great metal-white halo flower open, receptive and waiting. _ /I accept your bond. Bind me, and bear witness to the genesis of us all./_

And the armoring plates across Ravage's chest folded aside, exposing the largest of his hardline ports before his chosen.

This-was the one thing they'd never done before. Not in all of Ravage's tutoring, the orns of patient instruction, had they taken this last step. It belonged only between a symbiont and his Master, and no other.

Fierce joy welled up, an echo that underlaid every cascading emotion within his field. Soundwave lowered a primary cable, extending it outward, to the bare protometal-silver of that port. Silver-blue cilia blossomed from the sheath, touching the metal reverently, delicately exploring. The rim was smooth and sculpted, not rough-cut like the drone. The protometal was warm with the heat of the spark, pulsing beneath. The port was open, pristine and perfect as if Ravage had never suffered the terrible wounds that had brought him to Xyr. Soundwave took a deliberate, careful cycling of his vents, feeling the cooling air wash through his core, the press of the carriers' interest and disapproval about them.

Then he slipped the datacable home, cilia reaching in to intertwine and join in communion, tendrils finding hidden sockets, slipping deep. The inside of the port was deeply folded, every surface offering up a thousand living wires, a thousand tiny relays - and Soundwave's twining tendrils sank into them, metal to metal, and circuit to circuit, an elemental electrical union. The clawed clasping mechanisms ringing the sheath sought out the slitted notches around the port. Reconfiguring, folding blade into blade, the multitool tip locked him into place.

Soundwave reached out over that complex hardline, feeling for the touch of Ravage's mind-and tumbled into a deep well, an abyss of thought and memory that had no end, no beginning. He reeled from the immensity of that connection, of the razor-perfect edges to each memory. It was nothing like the drones he had trained with, the AIs and their data-handling protocols. This was something more, something spark-deep and incorruptible, and for the first time Soundwave truly saw how nothing a symbiont saw, nothing they learned or experienced, could ever be forgotten or forcibly erased. How could it, when every moment was engraved upon their very spark?

Remembering himself, remembering his place in the ceremony, Soundwave opened his own firewalls, offering them freely. Even now he was afraid of demanding too much, pushing too quickly. _/Memory-keeper Ravage: will accept my protection?/_

_/Your shelter mine; my talons yours - I take your protection, and it is part of me,/_ Ravage returned, the ritual affirmation ringing over the broadcast spectrum. And still Soundwave could feel the vastness of that memory well shuffling around him, a labyrinth of crystal shards, dendrite anamnesis like spindles of glass. Sharp, and confusing - more than a mech could ever learn or map, and was Soundwave meant to reach out to...? _/Easy, Soundwave... my Master./_ Gentle, and very private, a filtering thread of communication over the trembling web of the developing bond as the two mech's fields slowly meshed, merged. _/Let me show you. This way.../_

Touching, lightly, Ravage guided Soundwave's attention to the thinnest of layers, the outermost edge of the abyss, the merest rim of the chasm below. There were tatters of a firewall there already, snippets of code hanging unmaintained, corrupted lines and glitching recursions drifting, making tenuous connections and falling apart once more. It reminded Soundwave of the cobwebs of a Chaar spider, no longer a proper wall - just fragments. Unthinking, he bent himself to cleaning out that loose code, searing it away, breaking through the tattered remnants of a dead carrier.

Ravage shuddered a little, a physical trembling. _ /Good, my Master... yes, just so,/_ he encouraged, when Soundwave hesitated. Then, when the last of the corrupted code was gone, Ravage added over that private contact, _/now your own, overwriting. You need not fear - I will not break./_ A line at a time, Soundwave copied his own firewalls into that raw and empty space, filling it, building the barrier layer by layer, a shield against any but himself.

And through those protocols, now he could feel... Soundwave startled, shuttering his optics in autonomic response. It took his senses a moment to focus down, to see the chip for the circuits, but then, with awe... _/Query: this is you?/ _ A skewed system in miniature, a handful of processors coupled with a bank of sensors as elaborate as those of any special ops mech, a core relay of battle protocols and small power systems for weaponry and for simple transformation... and very little else. It seemed too stark, sensors aside - almost absurdly fragile. A sparkling of two vorns carried more hardware, more coding, but all of it was as open to Soundwave as if it was his own.

_/The part of me you can touch, sense - yes, Master,/_ Ravage agreed, drawing gently at Soundwave's attention when it seemed the carrier wished to trace out each of those relays, follow every line of code and explore each sensor assembly. The bond was stabilizing now, growing clearer, a spark-level communication running in parallel with the data transferring across hardline. _/And now this.../_ And Ravage guided him into the deep.

It was like dropping into a blade-edged abyss, memories swirling around him, knives that slipped between his talons... and then the memory that Ravage selected spiraled up, and twined the length of him, and the world broke open.

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_This is the First Memory._

_Devoid of timestamps or identifiers, it is older than counting. Numbers did not exist when it came into being, the arrangement of sparkbeats into astroseconds, astroseconds into kliks, breems, joor … rotations into cycles, cycles into vorn, each one thing distinct and connected to the next. The memory exists before these things, is born nameless, when glyphs were simple, single things of *warmth* and *alarm* and *energon*. _

_The first memory begins with light._

Optics spiralling open, limbs unfurling, armor shifting, stretching. A great darkness above, a sharp-edged shape that has no name crackling, seething with raw power, changing all that it touches. It hurts to be too near, you want to be *away*-and limbs push against the ground, obedient to your wishes. You know their functioning, the arrangements of their movement and operation engraved within you. You move away until the light is less, the prickle-pain along your armor less. The shape still looms above. As you watch, a raw assemblage of shiny-sharp-broken metals, half melted, rolls a little way past you. It brushes against the dark shape, and the light lifts it up, wraps around it and drops it down once more.

It looks at you. It has scarlet-bright optics, and limbs like yours. It did not have these before.

It uncurls upward, and stands; then lopes away.

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The memory changes, flickers of numberless times passing. A sun - white and warm and young, rising over the shining plains, rippled-alloy rainbows streaked with elaborate patterns of carbon and rust. Crystalline spires of purest energon rising into the sky, creating arches and towers that glow warm rose and aquamarine, whose tops disappear into the vastness above, high and impossible to see. Jagged ravines with molten-warm edges, liquid metal-rivers flowing yellow and red and black at their bottoms. And everywhere, creatures without names, large and small, spined and scaled, round and pointed, that leap and fly and move. Some pull apart anything else that they catch, taking armor and more for their own. Some ignore you, moving on their own paths, or clustering together, combining and changing and recombining, searching for new forms, new ways of running, seeing, being. Watching that makes you ache down inside. You want to change, to combine and be something new too.

And so when a new creature catches you, lifts you up and clicks at you, that is what you do. You like the feeling. You feel better, more armored; you *fit* with the other creature, where before you did not. The other creature likes it too, and you echo pleasure back and forth at each other, happy with this thing you have found.

You and he stay together. It is better; you are bigger this way, you have to run less. Your other can break off more energon, can fight and run, and you can watch and learn and warn when others try to devour your energon, to devour you. More creatures come, some like you, some like your other, and you find new ways of fitting together, of travelling the same paths and warning of the same dangers. Some of the others are as big as the rust-iron mountains, some are so small and swift they can hardly be seen; but they all change, they click-talk the same, and they all are brought together by the Primes.

The Primes stand tall in your memory, shining silver and gold, first in all things. When numbers are made, you know there are thirteen, twelve plus one, made together and first, always and ever a *prime*. Their Protector-brothers defend; the Primes call, and stand shining as the others come, moving together to talk and learn and change and build.

This is a good thing, you decide, always watching, always remembering. When you share it with the others, they agree. More to see, more learn, more to remember, and you pass it on to every kin-spark you make or find. _Remember. _

For this is the beginning, and no one yet knows the end.

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Soundwave lived every moment of it.

The input seemed to come from his own optics; blurry and new-made and witnessing the first of all life; from his own small pressure sensors firing as tiny limb-tips touch the ground for the first time; from primary buffer memories that hatchlings so young never recorded, never had the capacity to record... no hatchling save a symbiont. The first symbiont.

The record was thin at first, little more than touch and sight, exploring the newness of the world, and the vorns rushed by in moments. But over ages, the protoform found other ways of assembling pieces of metal, came to delight in complexity, found ever tinier and more efficient ways of building processors and sensors. And then the bliss of a warm sun became Soundwave's, and the fear of a hunter's closing jaws became his too, and the surprise and relief at that first inquisitive click.

Everything was in that record - everything. Even the feel of being first cradled in a roughly-shaped palm, the sensation of wrapping small talons around a larger one. And the euphoria of it, the first time the other learned to enfold him entirely. He came to know the tenor of voices of the first Primes, the way they moved, the way they came together with their Protector-brothers, every detail his down unto the very smallest - his, and then flowing on.

Soundwave lived every touch and emotion and sight and feel. He could have filled every data drive he possessed and still the experience would have flowed over, a lifetime of sensation, everything retained. Too much to keep, and he had to release those memories, processors running hot in the struggle to pare down and keep what he could.

There came a time when those optics - clear now, vision bright - turned on a symbiont sparkling, still small but big enough to share memory, a fierce black ball of sharpness and shadow and wary fascination. There came the long ritual of greeting, the touch of silvery fields, and finally the sharing, long transfers over primitive lines.

And then it was gone.

The memory unwound itself from Soundwave's presence, falling away, slipping back into that unending void, leaving him alone and empty within his own mind. And yet... not entirely alone. The shadowed sharpness, the wary fascination, was still here, still with him, easing him up from the depths to which he had fallen, from the fathomage of antiquity.

He was shaking, Soundwave realized.

He'd fallen to his hands, and his tanks pinged low. His chronometer registered the passage of nearly an orn. The hall was empty save for Ravage, who sat still and quiet beside him. The symbiont kept watch, stood guard and witness, the datacable still warm between them.

Oh.

So that's why the carrier always knelt to bond his first.

Trembling, Soundwave tested joints gone stiff, lifting one hand, reaching to be certain that the bladeframe was whole, was safe, was... real. And, without a word, Ravage pressed himself into that tenuous touch.

_/... so much .../_ Soundwave said, the channel between them opening without conscious effort. _/Too much to keep, so much missing … / _ He lifted his helm, regarding his First with renewed wonder. He'd known, of course, that symbionts were the living memory of Cybertron. But he hadn't really understood what that *meant*. Not until this moment. _/Ravage: holds it all. Nothing ever lost, or forgotten … / _He sat carefully back on his pedes, his frame for a moment feeling strange, too-large and alien.

_/...extraordinary./_ Soundwave stroked a palm down gleaming ebony armor, marvelling at the ability to reach out and just … touch, whenever he wanted. Because Ravage, and all the history and memory that he guarded, had chosen him. _/Soundwave: did not think this was possible,/_ he confessed, stunned.

The bladeframe arched his head tiredly into the touch. He wasn't often able to offer up the entirety of that memory, its full depth and range. But Soundwave's capacity was, as he had suspected, exceptional. The sheer bandwidth and depth of this bond... And it was still expanding, would continue to settle for a vorn or more. _/The exchange will become easier,/_ Ravage assured the mechling. No, a mechling no longer, but a bonded carrier in truth- and that thought was a good one. _/Control comes with time - you will be able to freeze and study a memory at will. And you need not always experience the full file. Visual or audible channels alone require a fraction of the bandwidth./ _Ravage shouldered close. He was silent for a while, just giving Soundwave time enough to collect himself.

_/But there are gaps. Some things are lost, or never recorded,/ _Ravage said, looking up. _/Without other symbionts, memories go unshared, and the loss of a single mech becomes the loss of history./_ The bladeframe shook his head. _/We do not know what became of the First. I was the last to share his memories, the file that you experienced./_

Soundwave absorbed that statement, taking the time to examine it from all sides. It was a subtle, potent reminder. Carriers, for all their authority, their physical power, were expendable. But the death of the First-and all other symbionts who followed him to the Well before their knowledge could be shared-were an irreplaceable loss not just to their carriers and their cohorts, but to all of Cybertron.

_/Soundwave: understands,/ _he sent finally. _/Gift of this memory, priceless. Your survival, imperative. Soundwave, grateful for the opportunity to serve as your guardian./ _

Ravage smoothed his plating flat under that careful touch. Every one of Soundwave's glyphs... was exactly what a carrier was supposed to say, was supposed to be - and the young carrier meant every word. A carrier put himself in harm's way, was the bulwark and the shield. A carrier was expendable. And yet, the thought of losing *this* one to the Well, the heat of that spark and the depth of this bond...

What could Ravage say to that innocent declaration? And so the bladeframe said nothing, kept his equivocation silent. After a moment he bent his head, nudging subtly at the cable, still locked close to his chest. Stiffly, the tiny fiber optical tendrils began to withdraw, breaking the connection a few at a time, then the locking blades petaled open, releasing the port. _/Energon and a place to defragment are nearby./ _Ravage stood ready to lend what support he could, as his carrier slowly levered himself to his feet.

_/Consequences of our bonding, many,/_ Soundwave observed, feeling unused joints and rotors creak as they were pressed into service after an orn of inactivity. He straightened, squaring his shoulders, and looked about the open, echoing expanse of the empty Starhall, the distant glimmer of Cybertron. He looked down at Ravage, and felt that ebullient joy bubble upwards once more. He was an Chronicler now in truth, and bonded, and he suddenly felt as if the entire galaxy was stretched out before them both. _/Plans and decisions, will both need to be made./_

Ravage looked up, finding his carrier's expression serious, his field sharp with determination, radiant with a joy and hope that the bladeframe could not help but reflect.

There would be decisions, and trials, and more. Soundwave would have to select at least a few other symbionts to form his full cohort, either from the colonies or Cybertron itself. Ravage's own choice would not have gone unnoticed - and while it was rare for another chronicler to try to court away a new carrier's First, it was not unheard of. It would not be long before research institutions and border units alike began to request Soundwave's presence. This newspark carrier, and the rest of his cohort, would be thrust into the domains and the machinations of mecha a thousand times his age and experience, who would very likely try to lure away his symbionts.

And yet... Ravage could not bring himself to regret his selection. This was a carrier like no other - something precious, something his. In the way of his kind, he would leave the planning to his Master, and focus on the moment. Fuel first, then rest.

_/There will time enough for all those things,/_ Ravage said, and led them out into the world.

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_Cowrite with hopeofdawn. Drop us a line if you've enjoyed this!_


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